Introduction

When travelling out of Katunayake Airport, visitors to Sri Lanka meet a large billboard – greeting tourists, retailers, buyers and investors with ‘Welcome to the world's first ethical apparel sourcing destination’ (Image 4.1). The sign incorporates a logo with a shopping cart – located above the slogan ‘Made in Sri Lanka’ and topped by a halo, no doubt a subliminal message of sanctified sourcing. This bold, confident sign reflects the success of the Sri Lankan apparel sector in recent decades. The advent of free market policies led to the establishment of the first FTZ in the late 1970s and initially attracted FDI. Alongside these rudimentary beginnings was the birth of nascent local capital within the sector. The industry now claims to produce GWG and sees itself in the vanguard of the global value chain. For instance, Sri Lanka was one of the initial countries in the region and the world to go into partnership with Marks and Spencer's Plan A and set up eco-friendly production sites. It also envisages becoming a regional hub and has already set itself up as a centre of fashion design.

This sign raises an obvious question: How has the Sri Lankan apparel industry gone so successfully from strength to strength in the past four decades that its apparel association can make such claims without appearing hubristic or attracting condemnation? In this chapter, I attempt to answer this question with an outline of Sri Lanka's apparel landscape and its evolution over the past 40 years. Taking 1977 as the beginning of the burgeoning of a local apparel sector, I provide the foundation from which to understand the post-2008 years. Drawing on and interweaving my fieldwork, I also examine the impact of the onset of a global recession and the ending of 30 years of ethnic war and violence. Alongside this, I briefly sketch the industry through a combination of management perspectives and secondary data. The chapter provides some historical context to enable an appreciation of how the Sri Lankan apparel industry has successfully navigated various challenges, a success that stands in stark contrast to the death of the industry in neighbouring Nepal (Shakya 2018).