Bangladesh is not just home to the breathtaking Sundarbans or a powerhouse cricket team — it’s also one of the globe’s most influential players in knitwear manufacturing. After China, Bangladesh stands as the second-largest exporter of Ready-Made Garments (RMG).
In 2025, its garment exports reached an impressive $38.48 billion, accounting for 82-85% of the country’s total export earnings (BKMEA). This success is powered by over 4,000 factories and more than 1.9 million dedicated workers (BGMEA). Despite this impressive growth, Bangladesh’s knitwear industry has untapped potential that’s being held back by several persistent challenges.
In this blog, we’ll explore the common roadblocks Bangladeshi knitwear factory owners face and how KnitOne can be the game-changing solution they need. But first, let’s take a closer look at the current state of Bangladesh’s dynamic knitwear sector.
Present Scenario of Knitwear Manufacturing in Bangladesh
Bangladesh is a preferred destination for high-volume, export-grade production of knitwear for global fashion brands like Zara, H&M, Gap, Levi’s, and Uniqlo. Hence, exports are made to major global markets like the U.S., Europe, Canada, and Japan.
The success of Bangladesh’s knitwear export sector can be attributed to three key strengths:
- Strong backward linkage
Backward linkage in knitwear refers to the local production and supply of essential raw materials such as yarn and fabric that feed into the knitwear manufacturing process. Bangladesh can internally fulfill about 85% of its yarn and fabric needs for Ready-Made Garments (RMG), and up to 90% of fabric requirements and 75% of yarn requirements are met locally (Apparel Resources).
- A skilled workforce
The skilled and passionate workforce in the knitwear industry powers factories for mass production. The factories also maintain rigorous compliance with international quality standards like ISO and BSCI. These reflect the pride and professionalism inherent in Bangladesh’s knitwear manufacturing.
- A supportive government
Along with the people, the Bangladeshi government also offers its full support; it has provided favorable tax policies, subsidies for sustainable practices, and the development of special economic zones.
Recently, Bangladesh faced a staggeringly high US tariff. Uncertainty arose when the country was presented with a high US tariff of 35–37% in early 2025. Later, through negotiations, the tariff under 20% aligned Bangladesh more closely with competitor countries (Bangladesh Textile Journal). The tariff adjustment was critical for maintaining Bangladesh’s competitiveness in the U.S. apparel market and preventing the potential loss of $1 billion in exports.
Despite being a thriving sector, the Bangladeshi knitwear industry still has challenges. Let’s explore them in detail.
Major Challenges of Knitwear Garment Manufacturing in Bangladesh
Some of the major challenges in Bangladesh’s knitwear manufacturing industry go beyond just daily operations. Factors like rising bank interest rates, increased energy costs, currency fluctuations, labor instability, and tightening compliance standards are putting consistent pressure on factory owners. These issues not only raise production costs but also disrupt planning, timelines, and overall efficiency — turning them into real roadblocks for growth.
To face such challenges and stay competitive in its dominant knitwear manufacturing, Bangladesh needs to innovate its sustainable and high-value production capacity. This certainly hints at the need for digital transformation in the knitwear industry.
On-the-ground Realities of Bangladesh’s Knitwear Manufacturing
As digital transformation specialists in knitwear manufacturing, we recently visited Bangladesh’s vibrant knitwear production hubs to understand the operational realities beyond data sheets. Through our interactions with factory owners, merchandisers, and production heads, one thing became clear — Bangladesh’s knitwear sector doesn’t need generic automation; it needs an industry-specific solution.
The Bangladeshi RMG sector is heavily centered on circular knitting, which drives high-volume exports for T-shirts, polos, innerwear, fleece, and casual wear. However, owners consistently highlighted two recurring problems: fragmented inventory visibility and reactive machine maintenance.
They also admitted a critical risk — a single error in circular knitting samples can trigger large-scale wastage and bulk production failures because the process relies on speed, consistency, and volume.
Meanwhile, factories focused on flat knit and weaving shared challenges around labor-heavy, CMT (Cut, Make, Trim) quality checks, machine usage imbalance, and unstructured scheduling, all affecting efficiency.
Many owners revealed that they have explored and are still exploring generic ERPs like SAP or local ERPs, but most found them unable to handle the specialized needs of knitwear. Such systems required heavy customization for:
- Merchandising & sample management
- TNA tracking
- Knitting-specific production planning
- Panel tracking
- MUP/CMT, rework, and rejections
- Subcontract tracking
In addition, implementations became long, complex, and still lacked the depth needed for knitting production.
From our observations, Bangladesh’s RMG manufacturing industry is eager and ready for transformation — but only with a platform built for knitwear realities, not generic manufacturing flows. They need an ERP that can offer end-to-end solutions with fewer needs for customization. This is where KnitOne, a tailored ERP solution for knitwear manufacturers, steps in.
KnitOne: The Perfect ERP for Flat-Knit Manufacturing in Bangladesh
Through our extensive research, factory visits, and discussions with leading Bangladeshi garment producers, we’ve gained insight into the unique intricacies of commercial circular knitwear and flat-knit production. To meet the needs of circular knit production, certain adjustments and possibly new modules are to be created. And our team is already into deep R&D for that.
The best part? KnitOne is a perfect fit for flat-knitwear manufacturing, having already mastered the complexities of this specialized industry. It effectively addresses both basic and advanced operational challenges, providing factory owners with complete, real-time visibility into every aspect of their operations. Wondering how? Let’s explore that in the next section.
KnitOne’s Modules to Tackle Challenges of the Bangladeshi Knitting Industry
KnitOne is already a trusted solution for Nepal’s leading luxury knitwear producer, Tricot Nepal. The standard modules and custom features by KnitOne aided Tricot in achieving targeted production goals.
Bangladesh, with a more vast and commercial knitting garment production than Nepal, can have bigger and more complex issues. But KnitOne can help tackle them efficiently. Here’s how:
1. Costing Module for Production Costing
One of the major challenges of Bangladeshi business owners is the high wastage rate. This roots back to the costing.
Merchandisers use Excel-based systems for both sample and bulk costing. With Excel-based costing for samples and bulk, even skilled teams face manual error risk. This often leads to overbuying or underbuying of yarn-one of the hidden costs of inefficiencies.
KnitOne helps in making precise sample costing, which serves as a reference for bulk production and ensures cost efficiency throughout the production cycle.
Explore the Sales and Costing Module.
2. Track Yarn Movement with Dedicated Inventory
Handling yarn is one of the most complex and critical processes in knitwear manufacturing. This complexity increases when dealing with luxury yarn. In addition, yarn misuse, poor distribution, and even theft are common challenges within factories, often leading to loss and production delays.
Yarn-related issues faced by Bangladeshi owners can be easily handled with KnitOne’s yarn tracking. This gives the inventory and factory owners full visibility of their yarn availability.
Explore the Yarn Inventory Module.
3. Streamlined Flow of Items Within the Factory
Many locally operated factories use legacy, relationship-driven purchasing practices. Such relationship-based sourcing and multi-tier supply chains can make visibility and timing harder. This results in material mismanagement, urgent last-minute purchases that disrupt workflow, and lower efficiency.
KnitOne’s procurement module streamlines the purchase process with an automated flow from purchase requisition to quotation request and purchase order (PO).
Know More about the Procurement Module.
4. In-Time Production with Capacity Planner/PPC
Production delay is one of the biggest concerns for factory owners in Bangladesh. Upon researching, we found that those delays are caused by weak production planning. Such planning leads to a chaotic shop floor, which eventually affects production quality.
Our capacity planner/PPC is the perfect solution to optimize production planning and ensure a smooth workflow.
Check out our Capacity Planner/PPC Module.
5. Workforce Efficiency to Uncover Performance Gaps
Bangladesh’s knitwear factory owners provide employment to thousands of workers, which makes labor costs a significant part of their expenses. However, not all workers are equally productive, and some may get involved in worker fraud.
KnitOne’s KPI-driven worker tracking helps factory owners pinpoint issues quickly, while also ensuring better productivity and accountability.
6. A Clear View of Costs and Contributions
As a busy but frustrated factory owner, you may be longing to be free from going back and forth with the production managers and sales team to get updates. Further, relying on manual, sheet-per-sheet reporting is time-consuming, prone to errors, and doesn’t offer real-time insights into profitability.
With KnitOne, business owners can access a centralized view of every activity of each department of the factory. With a single click, you can access the details and make informed business decisions within hours.
Final Thoughts
Bangladesh’s knitwear industry stands out as a major player in international textile manufacturing. It’s driven by entrepreneurs’ forward-thinking, the government’s strong support, skilled workers, and industry-compliant practices. With a focus on manufacturing high-quality, diversified knitwear, the country excels in meeting international standards.
However, to maintain and strengthen its global position, the Bangladeshi knitwear sector must evolve digitally. Many industry owners have realized this and opted for ERP solutions. However, the generic ERPs and local ERPs are not able to provide the optimum solution as expected. This is where KnitOne ERP steps in. To be more specific, KnitOne is the perfect ERP solution for flat-knitwear manufacturers.
Knitwear business owners, like you, can trust KnitOne to address and prevent key challenges like cost inefficiencies, material mismanagement, and production delays. With this ERP solution, you can streamline factory operations and improve productivity.
Why wait? Boost Profits with KnitOne’s Complete Operational Visibility.
