in Portugal Têxtil
With a customer portfolio with a lot of online presence and spread across 14 countries, Marjomotex achieved a growth of over 30% in last year’s turnover. For 2021, the clothing company’s objective is to consolidate the results and maintain its focus on internationalization and certification.
Despite the difficulties that prevailed in 2020, which caused the clothing producer to stop due to lack of raw materials temporarily, last year, it brought good news to Marjomotex, which saw its turnover grow more than 30%. «We had a growth, perhaps due to how we had structured our client portfolio, which spread over several markets, and also because our clients had a lot of presence online,» justifies Mónica Afonso.
The growth, believes the director-general, would be more significant in standard times because Marjomotex has been doing work in this direction. I usually say that if it had not been the year of the pandemic, we would have had a launching pad there”.
Although, like a large part of the clothing industry, it resorted to masks’ production, which is still going on, to compensate for the lack of dynamism in the fashion industry, customers with online sales allowed to boost the activity of the company, which employs 33 people. «Our product is also casual, which was a type of article that started to be in high demand. The combination of all these variables made us grow », he adds to Portugal Têxtil.
With 90% of turnover in foreign markets and sales to 14 countries, some markets stood out positively, such as Germany and the United Kingdom. Others «were very affected. The ones we felt most were Spain and France,” confesses Mónica Afonso.
The beginning of the year brought some instability. «In some customers, we noticed a decrease, but they still placed the order. As we have more clients in our portfolio, we were able to compensate for each other. Those who are only online, on the contrary – have increased the amount », reveals the director-general of Marjomotex.
New certification on the way
The use of organic raw materials – the company received, for the fourth consecutive year, the GOTS certification.
«Now, we are already moving towards other certifications. This year we should have another certificate, we still see it, but it could be that of recycled materials because now the market is more open.
Without international fairs, Marjomotex has reinforced digital communication, with publications on social networks and sending newsletters. “We continue to work on the databases we already had from fairs and other ways,” says the director-general. And this is also where new contacts come from. «Contacts continue to arrive because we have been to the fairs. Now and then customers come to us, via email or by phone, as we are in these catalogs », he explains.
With movements still restricted and markets with ups and downs, Mónica Afonso points out 2021 as a stabilization year. «We want to try to consolidate the client portfolio that we made in the last year,» she concludes.