Fashion and lifestyle retailers are cutting production ahead of the crucial Diwali festive season as they moderate their sales targets due to poor consumer sentiment and sluggish demand. Most retailers have already placed their orders for Diwali with suppliers, but they are using whatever curtailment leeway of 5-10% available to them for the months until December, industry insiders said. Large retailers such as Future Group, Reliance Retail and Aditya Birla would generally place their orders for Diwali by March-April but now production companies fear they might cancel some of the orders due to the overall economic slowdown. “Whatever sales we had projected for the season, now we have decided to cut it by 10%,” said Rahul Mehta, managing director at Creative Casuals that supplies garments to Reliance Retail, Aditya Birla and Shoppers Stop among others. Kumar Rajagopalan, CEO of Retailers Association of India, said organised retailers are still showing somewhat growth but the unorganised sector is bearing the real brunt at present. The trend is already visible. A listed retailer has decided to cut production by 10% at its textile manufacturing unit to deal with accumulating inventory, according to a large supplier. In June, the company also halted production for a week.