Sri Lanka’s MAS Holdings to manufacture wearable technology to make more comfortable apparel for women
MAS Holdings, which is a leading apparel manufacturer in Sri Lanka, is reportedly working on wearable technology to make menstruation more bearable for Sri Lankan women.
“Where we want to start work in Sri Lanka first is on periods,” MAS Holdings Femtech Head Gayani Abeysinghe has been quoted as saying in the local media.
“We want to start in our own factories because we want to make sure our own backyard is clean before we try to solve everyone else’s problem,” she has said
“We have been providing sanitary napkins to women who work there, but we want to do more than that.”
Abeysinghe has made these observations at a forum organized by the Institute of Policy Studies.
She has said MAS researched the need for femtech (female technology) on incontinence (involuntary defecation or urination), periods and pregnancy in Sri Lanka, and decided on periods.
MAS Holdings already has a super-absorbant ‘period pant’ brand ‘Thinx’ launched in the US.
‘Thinx’ pants are reportedly priced at US$ 24 upwards, and products range from absorbing half a tampon worth of menstrual bleeding, up to two.
It also owns the ‘Become’ brand in the UK, which sells clothing for women in menopause, to make ‘hot flashes’ more bearable.
“But it’s not economical to buy from other countries because of the cost, logistics, like any brand,” Abeysinghe has said.
She said that markets convert from single-use pads and tampons to re-usable products in mass scale if it fits their lifestyle.
Its Femtech team was set up to utilize apparel technologies to better serve needs of women, since the female health space has not seen much innovation in the past 70 years, since the invention of the menstrual cup, Abeysinghe has noted.
Femtech is expected to become a 50 billion US dollar global industry by 2025, but most the revenue will go to firms developing mobile apps for period and fertility tracking, she has added.
Therefore, MAS decided it had to innovate apparel technologies to tap into the market.
OSL take:
MAS Holdings is one of the key apparel exporters in Sri Lanka. The article above shows the technological advances made in local apparel exports. Sri Lanka also enjoys the benefits of the EU GSP Plus and US GSP trade concessions, which has given a further boost to local apparel exports. Therefore foreign businesses/investors could explore business/investment opportunities in Sri Lanka’s apparel sector.
| Article Code : | VBS/AT/09042019/Z_2 |