A year before the corona will take over the world and disrupt our lives, economy and markets, the team from the company FUSH from Belgrade arrived in the village of Oraovica near the town of Grdelica and the town of Leskovac to look around the building of the former ITP textile factory in bankruptcy. Today, from that renovated factory and that village, sportswear goes out all over the world.
The opening of a new textile factory in the vicinity of Leskovac, where today about seventy people work, mostly women. “Even though we have been in Oraovica for almost five years, I am very surprised that very little is known about us in Leskovac and the Jablanički district,” Nebojša Durmanović, marketing manager of FUSH, which has another plant in Belgrade said.
At the very beginning, in 2019, this company only had a sports program, but only a year later it included other clothing items in its production. “We produced and produce complete sports equipment, such as t-shirts, shorts, sports jerseys and more, but during the corona we had to expand the program because the clients asked for it.”
Namely, due to restrictions on going out and sporting events, the need for sports equipment decreased then. Fush’s partners were now looking for ordinary clothes, more for walking and recreation.
“A situation was created in which clients had less work, we almost lost the entire branch on which we built ourselves. They started to come in with requests for everyday clothes such as, for example, sweatshirts, t-shirts and tracksuits, so we already expanded production in 2020.”
This company exports almost all of its production throughout Europe, mostly to Italy and Germany. “Our products are sold all over the world, but in smaller quantities, mostly as trials. There were exports to the USA and Canada, and even one order went to the Faroe Islands”, he says.
In order to reach a foreign client, modern equipment and innovations are needed, so already in 2019, something was done in Oraovica that had not been done anywhere in Europe until then, at least when it comes to the textile industry.
“We were the only manufacturer in Europe that tested the prototype of Epson’s sublimation printer, which is used when we make jerseys. The design is printed on paper and we put that cut on a piece of clothing, put it through a machine called Calandra, and sublimation of paper and textiles takes place in it. The printer was the only one that could print fluorescent colors. So we did not get the fluorescent color by dyeing the material, we skipped the paint shop with toxic chemicals, and got the fluorescent print,” he explains with pride.
In this way, even today, they speed up the production process, save electricity and, most importantly, the whole process is ecologically clean. In addition to innovations, the company is working hard on the necessary certificates in order to reach the world’s most famous customer.
