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Esquel chief is tailor-made for the boardroom

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Esquel chairman Marjorie Yang Mun-tak sails into the interview room looking immaculate and says that business is unexpectedly rosy.

'Business is booming,' she said. 'I think we were a bit conservative last year - things really came back very fast - so we're expanding our production capacity because we're over-booked.'

Retail sales have been better than expected, she says. It seems that the firm's target customer - the 'conservative male who wants to look good without anybody knowing that he has taken a lot of time to look good' - is snapping up the shirts Esquel makes and distributes to brands ranging from Hugo Boss to Marks & Spencer.

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Demand for its wrinkle-proof shirts is high from men 'who don't bring their wives or maids on business trips [to do the ironing],' Ms Yang said.

Since taking over the business from her father, she has turned the company into one of the world's leading shirt-makers, with a workforce of 47,000 in 10 countries producing 54 million garments a year.

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However, market dominance did not guarantee always getting it right and the firm was now scrambling to deal with its order glut, she said.

'I was a little bit pessimistic because of the glut of capacity build-up - we've been very conservative in the last couple of years,' she said. 'With the multi-fibre agreement [on textile quotas] coming to an end [next year], a lot of capacity has built up because everybody has just been so optimistic.'

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