This place is pretty special, although there is no indication to the fact that it is one of the largest foreign exchange earners for India. Or that the biggest global brands get their garments made in this small city and that the garments made here are sold in the largest retail stores across the world.
This city exports knitwear worth Rs 11,000 crore (Rs billion) (Rs 110 billion) a year but it has no airport -- the nearest one is in Coimbatore (50 km away) and the nearest seaport is in Chennai.
The first stop for any international buyer of Indian garments is Tirupur. Buyers from 35 countries frequently visit Tirupur. Tirupur can deliver customised samples in less than 12 hours; half a million pieces in a matter of days.
Shobha Warrier in Tirupur
One look at the unruly traffic, the noise, the pollution and the dusty, dug-up roads and you could be forgiven for wondering if you are in one of the many such small towns that dot the Indian landscape. But you couldn't be more wrong.
This place is pretty special, although there is no indication to the fact that it is one of the largest foreign exchange earners for India. Or that the biggest global brands get their garments made in this small city and that the garments made here are sold in the largest retail stores across the world.
Welcome to Tirupur (occasionally spelled Tiruppur), a city of around 600,000 people in Tamil Nadu. It has a population of over a million in the urban agglomeration and has been registering an annual growth of 30 per cent since 1998.
This city exports knitwear worth Rs 11,000 crore (Rs billion) (Rs 110 billion) a year but it has no airport -- the nearest one is in Coimbatore (50 km away) and the nearest seaport is in Chennai.
The first stop for any international buyer of Indian garments is Tirupur. Buyers from 35 countries frequently visit Tirupur. Tirupur can deliver customised samples in less than 12 hours; half a million pieces in a matter of days.
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Image: A worker arranges coloured strings on a roof at a hand-dying factory.
Photographs: Reuters
There is a nondescript railway station at Tirupur and all the trains that go to Coimbatore stop here for less than 10 minutes. However, there is an inland rail container depot at Tirupur.
How it all began
The amazing growth of Tirupur as the Indian hub of garment exports started only in the late seventies. Before that, this small town was the manufacturing hub of white knit inner wear (the first knitwear unit in Tirupur was set up in 1925 and it emerged as the prominent centre for knitwear in South India in the 1940s) thanks to the Noyyal river and the cotton belt all around the city. With the Manchester of India -- Coimbatore -- next to Tirupur, it was only natural that the city should evolve as the garment manufacturing powerhouse of the country.
Initially, knitwear from Tirupur went to suppliers and exporters in Kolkata and Mumbai. But in the late seventies, Italian garment importer Verona chose to go directly to Tirupur to buy white T-shirts, and that was the beginning of the rise of a new Tirupur.
In short, Verona was the man who brought European business directly to Tirupur. In 1981, European retail chain C&A also came to Tirupur. In no time, other international stores too started approaching the garment manufacturers in Tirupur
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