Competitive wage rate together with easily trainable workforce, entrepreneurial skill, expanding supply side capacity, and government policy support helped to translate the comparative advantages into competitive advantages.

The core strength of the knitwear sector is its backward linkage. The entrepreneurs of the sector not only increased their stitching capacity overtime but also invested in the allied industry to augment the overall capacity of the total sector with the same pace. Over the period of time knitwear sector gradually became almost self sufficient in fabric and yarn. This improvement has become possible because of the integrated growth of spinning factories in line of the growth of country's stitching capacity and increased need of the yarn and fabric.

As the export increased in the knitwear sector, the capacity of backward linkage also increased accordingly. The result is local suppliers can provide now 90% of the total fabric requirement of the sector. The growth of spinning mills also stepped with the growth of knitwear exports. In 1993-94 total number of spindles was 1.38 million that supplied 10.70 million KG yarn. In 2003-04 the number almost tripled and it became 3.77 million that supplies 239.00 million KG yarn. As of now the total investment in the backward linkage in knitting, dyeing and spinning industry is more than US$ 4.9 billion.

Knitwear is the highest contributor in terms of both gross and net export earnings. In 2008-09, the contribution of knitwear in national export earnings is 41%. This has resulted because of the backward linkage industry that has grown over time which helped the knitwear sector to have the higher value addition and therefore a much higher net retention rate.