AND.DENIM shows how factory knowledge can reach graduates before the shop floor.
As Bangladesh’s denim industry grows more technical and more competitive, the weakest link is often talent readiness. Too many graduates arrive at factories with theory but little exposure to real production constraints. A farewell event at AND.DENIM on December 31 offered a different model—one that treats industrial practice not as a postscript to education, but as its core.
The occasion marked the completion of the centre’s inaugural hands-on development programme for young professionals. Led by Ashish Roy, CEO and managing director, alongside Pallabi Roy, AND.DENIM has positioned itself as a bridge between universities and factory reality—compressing years of experiential learning into a structured, supported environment.
In his closing remarks, Ashish Roy made clear that the programme’s output would extend beyond the cohort itself. Practical washing trials and wet-processing experiments undertaken by trainees are to be compiled into industry-based reference books—drawn from real production results rather than classroom abstraction. If distributed to universities, they would represent a rare inversion of the usual flow of knowledge, from factory to campus.
Industry attendance underlined the initiative’s credibility. Senior figures from denim and wet processing—spanning R&D, production and sourcing—praised the programme for exposing students to troubleshooting, decision-making and 24/7 operational realities that most graduates only encounter after several years in mills. Some noted that few organisations globally invest financially in trainees while granting access to deep, process-level expertise.
The logic is straightforward. Denim wet processing is among the most demanding segments of textiles, technically complex and tightly costed. Preparing entrants quickly is not philanthropy; it is workforce strategy. By treating trainees as collaborators rather than observers—and encouraging them to remain connected as the programme evolves—AND.DENIM is building a feedback loop between learning and practice.
For an industry under pressure to innovate, decarbonise and raise productivity, such models matter. Bangladesh’s long-term competitiveness will depend not only on machines and margins, but on how effectively it converts education into industrial capability. AND.DENIM’s experiment suggests that gap can be narrowed—deliberately, and sooner than the factory gate.
