MUMBAI, India — GM Fabrics has recently upgraded its dye house, laboratory facilities and also installed a robotic warehouse. “Since we are manufacturers of fancy decorative home furnishing fabrics, we have to carry a huge range of grey, processed, dyed yarns and the manual handling was cumbersome; we also needed to stock various grey fabrics and a huge range of finished packaged inventory to be shipped out,” said Gurvinder Singh, Managing Director, GM Fabrics. “It becomes practically impossible to manage all this manually, which usually results in huge delays in locating the product as human error cannot be avoided completely and the need of installing the new robotic warehouse became a necessity,” he added. “Now there is complete transparency of all the inventories, their accessibility is instantaneous and the factory operations have become smooth plus increased efficiency has been achieved.” With a total infrastructure now in place G.M. fabrics had to strengthen its portfolio by offering a wider range of collections under one roof. ‘We have now added velvets, digital prints and the market acceptance is positive’ Gurvinder said. “The company has taken care to offer quality velvets by choosing reputable Belgium made machines that produce face to face pile velvet, 16 Dobbies, eight Jacquards; we can also do Italian Jacquard styles in one pile, two pile, three pile and four pile colors in 145 cm standard finished width that are suitable for drapery, upholstery and almost all types of soft home furnishings and priced between  $6-11 per meter, 300 meters standard minimums and 200 meters at a surcharge,” Gurvinder said. G. M. Fabrics said it has also installed digital printing equipment (Italian origin), which can print up to 180 cm wide but only dispersed printing (polyester base) and accepts 300 meter standard minimums and said it is ready to offer lower minimums at an extra surcharge. Delivery time is three to four weeks on standard bases and carries a price range of five to seven US$. ‘”In the domestic market, digital printing on velvets is gaining acceptance but export acceptance is mainly to print on natural fiber bases, which we will be ready to offer first quarter of 2016”, Gurvinder added. GM’s HOMES collection introduced a year ago for the domestic market has been well accepted “even though the domestic market situation is tough,” he said. “The brand has been able to build and its growth has contributed immensely to our strength and has created good will among retailers,” he claims. HOMES direct retail distribution gives us the opportunity to expose our vast product line to the market, experiment and launch novelty products that previously had limited exposure to the existing wholesale network,” he concluded.