Africa-Press – Lesotho. ICONICS Clothing, a locally-owned manufacturer, is the overall winner of the Lesotho National Development Corporation (LNDC)’s Annual Exporter of the Year Award. The award was presented at a glittering ceremony on Tuesday.
In their third-year running, the awards are hosted by the LDNC in partnership with the Lesotho Post Bank and the United States Agency for International Development (USAID).
The awards recognise local companies making significant strides to improve the quality and standard of their products to penetrate the export market. Adjudicators are interested in innovative ways of production, staff development, distribution and marketing.
Production standards and diversification geared towards conquering the exports markets are also critical in the assessment of the submissions. Iconics produce Personal Protective Clothing for the medical sector and other related industries.
Its products include Lab-coats, Scrub Uniforms, Thermal Heating Jackets and disposable PPEs to both the domestic and export markets. The adjudicators were impressed by Iconics’ design of Electric Jackets powered by a power bank or battery pack.
The jackets are available in Hi-Visibility Design and can be custom-designed for corporates. The adjudicators noted Iconics’ consistency in improving production capacity to serve market demands beyond Lesotho.
This, they added, has been achieved by focusing on innovation, continuous staff training and strict adherence to the industry standards (ISO9001) and quality management standards.
The company has also focused on digital platforms to increase its market reach. “ICONICS has demonstrated outstanding performance overall, competing in all categories.
The company`s performance in all the categories has been consistent, missing with small margins of points,” the adjudicators said. In addition to a trophy and a certificate, the company received M10 000 from Lesotho Post Bank and M5 000 from the LNDC.
Iconics will be assisted to participate in a regional competition. Molise Ramaili, the LNDC chief executive, said competition is meant to create and stimulate a spirit of competitiveness among local exporters.
“The ceremony creates a unique platform to showcase and recognise exporters that continue to apply efforts to improve their business operations and performance for better access to global markets,” Ramaili said.
“In turn, it becomes an incentive to encourage the exporters to improve their business performance and devise innovative market access strategies.
Ramaili said the plan is to develop a bespoke export capacity building programme for all the beneficiaries to address their specific export challenges in line with their applications in the competition.
He said this will give individuals an opportunity to assess their export performance, learn, research, benchmark, and network to improve areas of concern.
He urged entrepreneurs to focus on improving their business operations, expand their networks and increase their brand visibility. n his fight against the board. He is said to be still fighting to force the board to call an urgent meeting to remove some directors he accuses of pushing him out.
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