Many leading international footwear brands like Clarks, Ecco, Gabor, Florshiem, Espirit, Sears, JC Penny, Pierre Cardin and others, which are sold in the retail stores in Europe, the US and several other countries, are produced in a small town in Vellore district of Tamil Nadu. Footwear products, worth over Rs 1,524 crore, were exported by companies in the Ambur-Vaniymbadi cluster in 2008-09. Forty three modern tanneries and shoe factories and about 24 raw-to-wet blue processing units, which produce semi-finished leather, finished leather, shoe components and shoes, account for over 10% of leather exports and 25% of shoe exports from the country.
The environmentally-advanced cluster has two common effluent treatment plants and 24 individual effluent treatment plants and facilities recycling and reusing waste water in the tanning process.
The splendid performance of the Ambur-Vaiymabdi cluster has been rewarded by the Centre, which has recognised Ambur as one of the three ?towns of export excellence (TEEs )? for leather products. Kanpur and Dewas (Madhya Pradesh) are the other two TEEs in the country.
?This special concession will pave way for Ambur to get additional support and incentives to develop the cluster?s industry and infrastructure facilities. Through this, Ambur will achieve the target of doubling the current annual export value of Rs 1,524.04 crore by 2014,? said Ambur Economic Development Organisation (AEDOL) chairman M Rafeeque Ahmed. The number of people employed also would go up to 45,000 from the present 31,600.
The recognised associations of units in the clusters would be provided financial assistance under the market-access initiative scheme for export promotion projects, on a priority basis for marketing, capacity building and technological services. Rafeeque also added that AEDOL has been planning to launch extensive and intensive market promotion initiatives to sustain, ?the hard earned share and enhance the market penetration?.
The organisation will promote Ambur and Vaniyambadi as a collective brand. It plans to accomplish this through market research, engaging an international agency, identifying the focus areas of promotion including B2B, drawing up an action plan spread over a period of three years and extending the work in B2C to the second stage in order to position Ambur exporters among retail brand names besides continuing their B2B exports.