Suditi Industries in 2017?
This year has been another ace up on our sleeve. Our first few tie-ups in the brand licensing clothing space, specifically our association with FIFA World Cup in 2014 followed by FC Barcelona, ManCity, started bearing fruits in the subsequent years.
Only last year, we did an arrangement with the sports megastar Yuvraj Singh to launch a clothing like called ‘YouWeCan’. It cannot get any better than launching licensing products in India, where this sort of business initiatives depends on select categories. Some of the most bankable licensing categories are fashion, media and entertainment, sports and fitness, and I am proud to say, we are mostly there. The popularity of Yuvraj Singh or the FIFA in India needs no further testimony for you and me. It continues to do brisk product business for us.
Since we are vertically-integrated; in short, we cater to processing, weaving, knitting, dyeing, printing finishing up to garmenting, we have the leverage to venture in, as much as possible. Our holistic business set-up has made our stay focussed and make new business arrangement depending upon the lucrative business structure. People have a trust in the company and our brands-Riot and Indianink have given us huge sales volume this year. It has been a momentous year so far and with festivities around the corner, we are hopeful of celebrating the end of 2017 in the further glory of the whole business.
Suditi Industries in India as well as in International Market?
In India, we are focused on adding an international appeal to the garments business. We do it specifically through our international licensing arrangements. FIFA, FC Barcelona and Manchester UC are immensely popular here and it does not get any better if we can give the fans, who are our customers, exactly what they desire. It must be appealing to them and our sales figures so far, show that we have people look at our clothing line with a high desirability quotient.
Competition in Indian Market?
It is never easy to offer something as unique as licensed merchandise. There are so many clones available, so why would a customer buy a licensed brand in the first place? Of course, our strategy has been to attend to the niche customer base through our licensing business, yet, it can always get difficult to induce customer interest in buying branded stuff produced with quality and care. We continue to learn and see our prospective buyers desire the product because of its fine-quality or equating the brand with something as superior as the game itself.
In addition to this, our own retail brand- Indianink and Riot- are doing good business online. Through these segmented brands, we hope to attend to the contemporary sensibilities of a customer buying an ethnic or a western clothing collection. Both brands clearly cater to the classified taste of the buyers with a Suditi stamp. Like I said, there is no real competition for us in a way, since we do everything in-house, from the first stage development of clothing to its finishing and in the process, pay acute attention to offer something very original to our buyers. An experience they always cherish.
Plan for Expansion in Manufacturing and Retailing?
We will continue to invest as far as we can link manufacturing and retailing. For us, both these business establishments work together, with the manufacturing giving us an edge over deciding what to retail and the current trends in the retailing, providing us further business insights on how to effectively utilise our manufacturing capacity and need be, expand it accordingly. If you look at the current retailing scenario, it will only go forward for us. As we launch a more licensed clothing line and create new markets for Indianink and Riot, it is natural for us to use better machines and equipment. We have professional tie-ups to source the clothing machines we use and this is a form of investment I am very confident about. We will continue to buy the best-in-class machines to produce our fine-quality range of garments.
Your Success Story? Your Message to Indian Consumer?
I think Suditi’s success story is directly linked to the evolvement of the Indian Consumer. The company started way back in 1991 and it is only through our skill investment and determination were we able to make such a big leap forward.
Today, there is nothing we don’t offer to the diversified customer base of clothing business. Much of our business focus and will has been led by the diversifying or the evolving taste of the Indian Consumer. People today know how exactly the want to style-up. They never need to be taught to style. We, at Suditi, respect this consumer sentiment of investing in clothing fashion on own. We are here to offer you something unique, which will most likely match your personal style. We know the consumer mindset and our confident that no matter how they shop- online or offline- we are there to help them restyle their wardrobe, wishfully and desirably.
Suditi Industries Vision for the year 2017-2020?
A lot is happening. We have recently tied-up the trending cinema icon, Anushka Sharma, to launch a new licensing brand called Nush. The brand is her very own signature style clothing line with underlines attributes of comfort and fashionable clothing for everyday styling. I feel Anushka is a great fashion icon and a current style rage among the youth. She likes to keep it simple and some of her most appealing personality attributes and styling sensibilities have been captured on the clothing brand canvass called Nush. People will love her clothing style as much as they love her on-screen styling and performance.
So, increased retail focus in on-the-cards. The clear focus is to identify brands and youths who continue to inspire and feel inspired by fashionable clothing themselves. Each celebrity has so much value add to do the clothing business and it is this opportunity, we wish to pursue further. As we continue to launch more licensed brands, we also plan to match it up with the infrastructural base. Suditi will eventually strengthen its distribution network even further and plan more on the low-capex franchisee model. Also, e-commerce is where so much action continues to happen and we will be revisiting our marketing options to think more innovatively and progressively like the internet users are becoming now