New school year | School uniform business does not wear out

These are hectic and bustling days at the Pan Pan Uniform Specialist shop, near Lou Lim Ieoc Garden, as yet another school year begins. Parents and their wholehearted, boisterous children surround the counter while vendors sort out school uniforms’ sizes for each customer.
For many Macau children and teenagers, the school year kicked off yesterday. That means a great deal of work for Tony Kuok, the shop’s assistant manager, whose father founded the business back in the 1970s.
The shop is rather crowded these days, he says, as most parents buy their kids’ uniforms just a few days before school begins.
With the shop manufacturing and selling uniforms for about 10 to 15 schools, shelves are overflowing with t-shirts, shorts, skirts and pants, for The International School, for Costa Nunes kindergarten, for the Portuguese School (EPM), and many more.
“Usually schools like to design their own uniforms, choosing colors, forms, representations. Some schools just have very simple uniforms, while others are more detailed,” Mr Kuok recalled in an interview with the Times yesterday.
Girls’ uniforms are the most detailed, he acknowledged. “They are more distinctive than the male uniforms. Most girls nowadays don’t like to wear skirts, actually. They prefer to wear pants. That’s a trend that has been changing over recent years,” he said, concluding that most schools go for a simple white dress as their uniform.
The distinctiveness of uniforms depends greatly on schools. “The Portuguese School likes [students] to wear polo shirts. It’s a form of representation. [The design of uniforms] is really school-dependent. Usually it’s just shirts [and pants] or dresses. So far, EPM is the most special one,” he conceded.
Having helped to run the business for the past eight years, Mr Kuok explains how the shop relies almost entirely on their factory located in mainland China, which employs about 30 workers.
“We own a factory there, and have full control of it. But we do outsource to bigger factories at times, when they are not able to do everything by themselves. Most shops have their own factory or have some kind of system that they can control,” he revealed.
Mr Kuok said that most school-uniform businesses choose to set up their own factories, as relying on outsourcing might be trickier.
The price varies depending on fabric quality, or how it’s been produced, but parents can expect a 5- to 10-percent price increase each year. Depending on the school, a kindergarten uniform set can cost about MOP100.
At his shop, they aren’t the only party having a say in the uniforms’ pricing. The school receives a copy of the price and then submits it to the Education and Youth Affairs Bureau, he said.
China’s economy has slowed down recently and Macau’s gaming revenue has continued to decline over the past 15 months.
The economic turmoil has not gone unnoticed by uniform business owners. Mr Kuok said that if parents bought more than one uniform set last year, this year they have chosen to buy just one set and buy more later on, if needed.
Nevertheless, he acknowledged, “School uniforms are always in business as long as people are still having to use them.” The fabric business, however, sees more fluctuation, according to Mr Kuok.
They resort to the Hong Kong market to buy fabrics, given that quality-control standards are higher there, although fabrics still come from mainland China. “To be safe, we buy fabrics in Hong Kong even though it’s a little bit more expensive,” he added.
The business has changed greatly since his father first opened the store. Back then, the store had specialized in all different sorts of uniforms, selling for restaurants, hotels and for customers in mainland China. Back then, many shop owners would actually produce uniforms here. “We even had a mini-factory here in Macau. But, right now, we do everything in my factory in China,” he said.
The shop also sells other types of uniforms, but currently focuses mostly on school uniforms. Although the shop is open all year round, business volume is higher between July and August when they sell summer uniforms, and in November when parents buy winter ones.

Casino demand depressed by downturn

The uniform business for local casinos has been impacted by the economic downturn, says Tony Kuok, assistant manager at Pan Pan Uniform Specialist shop. He recalled that they had sold a higher volume of uniforms for casino VIP rooms’ employees in previous years. But now that the gaming revenue has continued to decline for the fifteenth straight month in August, business is not what it used to be. Nevertheless, Mr Kuok said that, even if the local economy does not experience signs of improvement, there’s still a next wave of Cotai resorts being shaped. “They will still need uniforms,” he said.