The increasing shift of manufacturing jobs from Europe
and North America to developing countries since the 1970s has been an extremely
painful transition and has been roundly condemned. Well-paying jobs were
destroyed in the West, and production was moved to factories in developing
countries, often with low wages and poor social compliance. However, the Picard
Company has shown that hardheaded price calculations can go hand in hand with
socially responsible business practices.
Saiful Islam inspects the kindergarten at Picard Bangladesh. |
He approached
the photographer and said, ‘You are looking for child labour? Let me take you
inside and show you.’ The alarmed photographer tried to back away, anticipating
that he might be roughed up, but Islam reassured the frightened man that he was
in no danger and escorted him to the factory’s kindergarten. The photographer
dutifully filmed the after-school care for 40-50 children and all-day childcare
for 32 children, but of course the pictures were never shown on television.
Evidence of a Bangladeshi entrepreneur doing something right doesn’t fit the
story line we have come to expect.
Picard
Bangladesh, however, has been defying convention wisdom about the exploitative
nature of overseas production since it was established in 1997. Picard
Bangladesh is a joint venture between Saiful Islam, who before then had been
working in his family’s readymade garment business in Bangladesh, and the
Picard Company in Obertshausen, Germany, which sells its high quality leather
bags across Europe and Asia.
Unlike most
leather goods firms, the Picard Company was not interested in simply sourcing
bags overseas; the company had been both manufacturer and retailer since Martin
Picard started the family business with his sons, Edmund and Alois in 1928. By
the end of the 1960s, the company had four factories in Germany with over 1000
workers.
Thomas Picard;'If we had not done this, we would no long exist.' |
But, as Thomas
Picard, the Director of Picard Germany, explains, ‘Then the big buyers –
Neckermann, Karstadt, Kaufhof, Horton and Hertie – went to South America,
Korea, Taiwan, Hong Kong, and began to buy there. Our production had no chance
against this competition. We tried, but it was hopeless. In 1976 we opened our
first overseas production facility in Tunisia. We simply moved what we had in
our Spessart factory to Tunisia – with a German manager and everything. And we
worked there just like we had always worked here.’
The next
expansion was to China, in 1982. And then in 1995, Thomas Picard started
looking for a partner in Bangladesh. Picard: ‘It was clear to me already in
1995 that China would close down at some point. It got too expensive and too
complicated – too many requirements, too many demands.’ A mutual acquaintance,
Franz Bauer from the Offenbach University of Art and Design, who conducted leather
bag design and production training in Bangladesh, brought the two men together.