1. Production Description: Jeans garments are clothes such as pairs of trousers, jackets, shirts, skits, shorts, etc made from jeans fabrics. These garments are used by people of all ages especially by the young. The clothes are practical, have longer life and they are casual. They are used for heavy duty work, in offices, schools, shops, etc. they have become almost the universal cloth of the young generation.
2. Rationale: Clothes made form jeans have almost become universal. Except in some Muslim countries, young people every where wear jeans. In developed countries, jeans are worn by people both in urban and rural areas. In developing countries where there is limited urbanization, jeans are worn by people in urban areas. In our country, jeans have become so popular that once can hardly see any type of cloth worn by the urban youth except jeans. Practically all young people in Addis Ababa, Awassa, jima, Bahir Dar, mekele or anyh other urban center (small or big) wear clothes made from jeans. One can say that jeans have become the national dress of the youth in almost all countries. While there is so much demand for jeans clothes in the country, there is no any textile plant that produces jeans or any garment factory which produces jeans clothes. Given the present level of consumption of jeans clothes, there is a captive market for a garment factory that can produce jeans clothe or products. Of course, the plant have to be competitive in terms of price, style and quality of fabrics.
3. Market Potential: The Major consumers of jeans clothes are those between the age of 10 and 30 and who live mainly in urban areas. Urban people of this age group number about 2.8 million in Ethiopia and 0.5 million in the Amhara Region. If we assume that at least 80 percent of these people wear jeans clothes of any type, the number of jeans consumers is about 2.24 million in Ethiopia and 0.4 million in the Amhara Region. Again if we assume that one consumer wears about 4m2 of jeans cloth (equivalent to two pairs of jeans trousers), total annual consumption of jeans in Ethiopia will be 8.96 million m2 (equivalent to 2.24 million pairs of trousers) and 1.6 million m2 is the Amhara region. this annual consumption is large enough to make a jeans garment factory operational for a full year.
4. Source of Raw Material: The main raw materials for a jeans garment factory are jeans fabrics, zippers, sewing thread and buttons. The fabrics will be imported and the other in puts will be secured from domestic sources.
5. Process and Technology: A garment factory is at tailoring factory where there is division of labour and specialized machines for performing different portions of sewing a garment (trousers, jackets, skirts etc). hence the main stages are making designs, cutting the fabrics according to designs, sewing the different parts of the garments, putting buttons, ironing (if necessary) folding and packing. Main machines needed include electric scissors, different types of sewing machines, electric irons, etc.
6. Estimated Investment: For medium size garment factory, the estimated investment will be:
§ Building/shade 400 m2 at Birr 2000/m2 800,000
§ Machinery 500,000
§ Working Capital 250,000
Total 1,550,000
7. Benefits: Saves foreign exchange and regional financial resources, promotes self-sufficiency
8. Location: Bahir Dar, Combolcha or any other major urban center