Critical thinking & strategising have to be your strongest skills
Launched in 2018, Raisin is a contemporary fusion fashion brand that aims to offer women clothing that is the perfect mix of comfort and style and makes them feel confident as well as comfortable in their own skin. Vikash and Vishal Pacheriwal, Founders of Raisin, share with Paulami Chatterjee how the brand has deployed a phygital strategy to reach out to more consumers and its presence across 280+ stores in India in a span of just 3 years.
How did Raisin come into existence to the current day when it has around 280+ nationwide stores?
Raisin was established in 2018. We had around 30 years of experience in the textile industry, and therefore, it was a venture with the idea of starting an ethnic contemporarywear brand for women but not compromising on comfort. It started as a self-financed brand directed towards manufacturing ethnic yet modernised clothing that provides the modern-day women the comfort they seek in traditional ethnicwear. A Direct-2-Consumer (D2C) company in Surat was a very new idea when we envisioned Raisin. The strategies and sincere dedication towards a goal drove the company to touch newer heights each year. Raisin today has 2.4 lakh happy customers with 280+ stores in a span of 3 years.
Parvati Fabrics limited, the parent company of Raisin, has always had very strong retail and sales channels. Thus, Raisin got the advantage of the trust that Parvati had. Our experience in fabrics industry for over 30 years has also given us a lot of advantage over the others.
What are your stores and collection expansion plans for 2021/2022?
Talking of the retail presence, we plan to have 450+ stores by March 2022, 20 more pan India. Now, as the company is observing a YOY increase of more than 75 per cent, it is expecting an ample increase in turnover in the next 3 years and reach ₹500 crore. Along with this, we have more than 280 physical outlets all-over India and are continuously growing in tier I and tier II cities. We are also planning to spread the venture worldwide. We have thought of launching our festive collection and then we are lined up with our travel and spring-summer collection.
How has the pandemic affected the fashion industry and how are you keeping afloat in this situation?
The pandemic has affected almost every industry and the fashion industry is no exception. We at Raisin strive hard to provide our services to the customers even in these difficult times. Since the customers could not reach our physical stores, we reached our customers halfway by making a strong digital presence. Through various digital platforms, we are able to get connected with our customers more than ever. Our strategy is to give the ultimate benefit to the customers. The pandemic situation has made the customers demand door-step service. Changing with the times and reshaping our strategies to fit in the situation is what keeps us going.
What was the inspiration behind founding the brand and the struggles faced later on?
We wanted to reach directly to the consumers, so we manufacture all the garments ourselves. This made us fill the gap and give the right quality products at the right price. The struggles were the same as faced by any other new business. It requires a brand its own sweet time to set its foot in the market.
What is the success mantra of Raisin?
Right price of the right fabric at the right time is our success mantra.
How are you leveraging digital platforms to reach your audience and build your brand stronger?
As customers were not able to visit the physical stores due to the sudden onset of the pandemic, we made a strong online presence. We have our website from where all the retail happens now. Other than that, we have also done a lot of influencer marketing. Seeing your favourite celebrities resonate the idea of a brand that stands for quality and comfort, makes a good impression on the audience. Through the influencer’s social media handles we have tried to spread our brand’s idea.
We launched our brand in Bollywood by making Bhumi Pednekar, a celebrated Bollywood actress, as the face of our brand. Through digital platforms, a brand surely gets a good exposure. Leveraging the brand’s digital presence to convey customers about the new launch and what the brand is upto helps us to approach our potential customers easily.
What is your outlook on the changing retail scenario and some of the recent fashion trends?
The idea is always to improve and always provide the customers what they truly want. If the customers trust a brand, then they will buy from that brand, no matter how far the brand is functioning from. After Covid, customers have started trusting the right brands all the more. The brands who have built trust in the offline market have profited during the pandemic as the customers migrated to omnichannel and bought from those brands. Such was the case with Raisin as well. Our customers trust us and therefore they buy our products online too. Co-ords, dresses have worked a lot for us. And just to give a sneak peak of our upcoming collection, you might see a lot of western outfits from Raisin in the near future.
What is the USP of your products?
Raisin has been a brand which has always stood for the quality of fabrics to provide comfortable clothing. Our USP definitely would be our excellent quality fabric. Other than this, our customers have always appreciated the fact that our products have always been fairly priced.
Raisin is a D2C brand. The D2C segment always assures customers that they will get the right products at the right price. We at Raisin believe in the quid pro quo wherein the customers are not charged immoderately. We as a brand have always relied on the reviews of our customers and hence have always provided in-trend clothing items to them.
How has the brand grown in the past 3 years?
Raisin started off as a contemporary ethnic clothing line for modern day working women. Through the course of time, we have also started our very own jewellery line. Talking about the retail presence, to date, we have 220+ physical stores and MBOs and 5+ EBOs all over the country.
What has entrepreneurship taught you?
First and foremost, entrepreneurship, in bold and inverted commas, is not an easy task. It surely will not be a bed of roses. The idea of start-ups does sound nice, but reality hits sooner than you might have thought. You have to be on your toes all the time. Critical thinking and strategising have to be your strongest skills. And not to mention, you need to treat your company/brand as your own child. You constantly have to think of ways to make it better with each passing day. In today’s cut-throat competition, thinking outside the box is not sufficient. You have to execute an idea as soon as possible or else someone else might reap the fruits of that idea right before your eyes. You have to be your own motivation and also motivate the people who are working for you. And among all this, you have to strike a balance between your personal and professional life too.
Published on: 13/09/2021
DISCLAIMER: All views and opinions expressed in this column are solely of the interviewee, and they do not reflect in any way the opinion of Fibre2Fashion.com.
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