Interview with Arvind Saraf

Arvind Saraf
Director
Triveni

We are beginning to see a revival of interest in ethnicwear

Triveni, a 30-year old player in the saree and ethnicwear market, is revolutionising the sector with its unique offerings, innovative marketing and engagement strategies and technical strides. Arvind Saraf, Director, Triveni spoke to Nivedita Jayaram Pawar on popularising the 'six metres of fabric' and the impact of e-commerce on the sector.

Saree is not a popular mode of clothing, especially among the younger generation. How are you promoting the saree?

Our focus has been to break the traditional perception of saree as a garment meant to be worn only in a traditional way. The reality is that the saree can be explored in many different ways. We expose this aspect of the garment to the student community and corporates through campus activities, corporate partnerships, etc. We are engaging students from different backgrounds, not only from India but also abroad via live projects and contests to experience a slice of Indian culture and take it forward. They participate enthusiastically in various design contests, or as Campus Ambassadors organising saree draping sessions and Ethnic Look Contests. So in some way they are able to realise the importance of ethnicwear. In order to encourage corporate houses to go ethnic, we have Corporate Partnership Programme - 'Triveni Sang', through which we make them believe that "One can be serious in a saree" and realise the importance of our culture by organising various team activities like Ethnic Saturdays and so on.

Today, brands are using traditional handwork to bring exciting fusion that is appealing to the younger masses. What is Triveni doing in this regard?

Fusion is more than handwork - it's in prints, surface work, silhouettes, drapes, etc. We are fusing contemporary prints into the old, bringing in elements of traditional hand paintings of the East with modern colour swatches. Traditional handwork elements are often merged with modern elements to create a fusion that is appealing to the young generation. Our latest collections have experimented a lot with silhouettes, bringing in kurti style jackets to accompany the sarees and ghagras. Mirror and stone handwork, along with exquisite embroideries of earthy tones have made an entry again. Recently we initiated a Saree Draping Challenge - "Dare2Drape", where we invited women all around the globe to try their hands on various drapes and realise that there is more to this "6 metres piece of cloth", rather than just draping it in one traditional way. The challenge works on a 7X7 theme (dare to try 7 different drapes, in 7 weeks, 7 sarees, 7 nominations). We have successfully started with the challenge, including our eight leading faces (from different backgrounds). To support the cause Triveni has sponsored sarees for all the leading faces.

Tell us something about the ethnicwear market in India. How large is it and at what rate is it growing? What are the factors contributing to this growth?

The market for ethnicwear or indutvas in India was estimated at `80,000 crore in 2013 - and is expected to grow at about 8 per cent per annum. We are beginning to see a revival of interest in ethnicwear, with younger generation having lived outside becoming influencers in fashion segment, and thus more willing to experiment with it. Brands are also starting to emerge in an industry which was earlier only dominated by local branded players. And as more women start working, ethnicwear is starting to get acceptance as an office wear.

What categories are you present in ethnicwear? What is the contribution of each of these categories? Which is the fastest growing?

Within ethnicwear, as an offline brand - we focus largely on sarees and lehenga-cholis. With our e-retail operations, we have gone a few steps beyond and also expanded to salwar suits, dress materials, traditional gowns, accessories, and kurtis. We are also present in menswear and kidswear. Growth drivers vary by location and demographics. With the younger generation, we are seeing salwar suits and kurtis grow much faster. Within the metros, there is almost a revival of sorts of sarees - and that segment seems to be growing.

The indutvas market space is largely populated by unorganised players. Each region of the country has strong players. How do you tackle this?

A few recent trends in the industry are challenging the regional players' dominance, forcing them to think in terms of bigger or more national level pictures:

Customer style preferences are converging, partly due to the presence of television and online medium. It’s very common for a customer in a small town in North India or South India to aspire to the same styles as a customer in Mumbai.
Customers have been moving away from shopping at local stores to shopping online. When online, regional brand visibility does not matter – as a level playing field, customers will decide based on the product styling, pricing and brand perception.

Our design team has now been focusing on this converging style preferences, bringing in different regional elements in our designs - yet, maintaining the national appeal. We had a vision to foresee the growth of online medium and have set up a strong team to focus on Triveni's online presence, making it one of the few pioneering brands with an equally strong online and offline presence. The overcrowding of manufacturers and players in the market has also eroded the domestic margins, forcing the companies to keep wastage and inefficiencies to a minimum. That by itself is also forcing companies to organise themselves.

Triveni has been a pioneer in its segment. What are some of the significant changes you have seen in the industry? How has the industry evolved?

Ethnicwear industry has evolved along multiple lines:

Customers have become much more selective about styles and preferences. A strong focus on constant innovations in design and styling is required, with most of the leading brands now keeping an in-house design team.
There have been constant innovations in production techniques, adding to the range of the product and styles available in the market, e.g. machine embroidery, especially with machines from China, has made surface ornamentation much more achievable. Digital printing has expanded the range of prints and colours a manufacturer can offer.
Looking at brand positioning much more carefully, especially with the prevalence of the digital medium, both for retail and wholesale, brands are looking at using the digital media effectively to spread their word out.
Industry has been moving towards getting more organised, with written processes and SOPs now replacing the oral communication. Structured reports and responsibility demarcation is replacing the ad hoc styles of working in the past. ERPs and workflow tools are becoming even more important, with adequate and proper MIS and reports coming from it.

Triveni went online in 2011 with TriveniEthnics.com How is e-commerce adding to the growth? What percentage of revenue comes from online?

Triveni's online jump was a leap of faith - back in 2011 when e-commerce was still only a small part of the industry. We saw the future potential of the industry. While the sector has been fast growing, the movement to online has helped in more ways than just revenue. Triveni's prior customer outreach was (and still continues to be primarily) through a network of distributors and wholesalers. E-commerce was the first form of direct retail practiced by Triveni - and this direct interaction with customers brought us more direct feedback on the products and brand perception. It forced us to document our vision and mission, to redo the brand identity and gave us a direct way to get customer feedback which directly or indirectly went into our future designs. E-commerce has also opened up other opportunities. We are actively developing e-commerce channels not just as retail but even a B2B channel. Only recently, the e-commerce revenues jumped into double digits of the total Triveni revenue, and we expect that to continue.

What changes have you seen in consumer behaviour and demand?

Women's ethnicwear industry, being highly competitive, customers have become more discerning, and get easily influenced by national and metro trends, especially the celebrity appearances in a much talked about movie or a saree carried by some daily soap actress. Many preferences are seen as converging, when we talk of the different styles being carried in metros and small towns or different parts of India. With prevalence of western brands, customers have started looking for and identifying brands in their purchases.

Tell us something about the trends in fabrics as far as ethnicwear is concerned?

The ethnicwear industry is more diverted towards blended fabrics - combining the feel of natural with comfort, faster prints, weather friendliness and surface work that polyesters offer. There have been various innovations in weaving patterns, which brought in brassos and jacquards. Brassos and jacquards give the 3D textures while retaining the longevity. Even different sections of fabrics go for warps and wefts. Linens and linen blended fabrics are very much in demand now. Recent innovations have also blended linen with polyesters.

What kind of R&D in the fabrics are you involved in at your factories?

We work closely with our vendor weavers making them aware of the industry trends. These weaving units try out different fabrics as per inputs by Triveni - and share with us for feedback. Much of the innovation is driven by inspiration from natural fabrics, the need to appeal to younger audiences, and combining the natural fabric appeal with the strengths of the polyesters.

You are present in both segments - medium and premium. Which is the fastest growing?

Numbers are coming from medium. While premium is still very touch-and-feel and individual designer centred. As brands become dominant, you'll see established brands and labels instead of direct designers also entering the premium segment. However, even our medium segment is based on offering highest product quality - for which complete care is being taken. As the market for indutvas evolves to more office / daily wear adoption amongst the younger generation, we expect the mid-segment to grow faster. Premium growth will kick in a little later.

What kind of technology innovations are you involved in?

We have launched a new company to build technologies for SMEs - known as Triveni Labs, where we have built the following solutions: We bring about production efficiency and inventory reduction with process mapping and improvements where raw material suppliers are tracked and managed Dashboards to monitor production better so that production is not hindered due to a small fault at any stage Analytics to aid production planning and decision making. We are also working on a Catalogue Sharing App which will allow a number of product catalogues to be sent to a large wholesaler base with a single click. Managing complete e-commerce for the product, or offering e-commerce management tools - which will make listing of products on various channels (with different format) easier. We also have an App which tracks the current location of our salesperson and even creates a Purchase Order simultaneously. Last but not the least, we are working on Virtual Trial Rooms wherein a customer can get an idea about how he/she would look like in a particular outfit.

What are the various challenges in this industry and specifically pertaining to ethnicwear? How do you deal with those?

The larger challenges that the ethnicwear industry is facing are: Expanding the market size by reaching out to the international markets: the youngsters or looking at how the industry's existing designs and manufacturing capabilities can be adapted to other product categories. Collaboratively working on identifying good buyers and vendors. The industry players are largely unorganised or semi-organised, and the industry works on credit. Most of the major brands have issues of extremely delayed payments or even defaults from their wholesalers and distributors. Unfortunately, the brands don't talk to each other much. If a forum brings together this credit and payment history information in a centralised system or a sharing mechanism, many such bad debts can be reduced. Replicas in the market. Trade marking and copyrighting is very weak in the ethnicwear industry. Printing and embroidery are easily copied and replicated at a much inferior quality. E-commerce also offers these replicamakers an easy channel to sell. The industry has to get together to fight this replica making.

Which are your strong markets?

Geographically, Triveni covers all of India. Traditionally, the North and West are our strongholds. However, metros are gradually taking up significant part of our market - largely due to the brand reinvention and preference convergence of the customers. Now, South India - especially metros such as Bangalore, Chennai and Hyderabad are a significant part of our volumes. Going forward, we expect Triveni's penetration in the metros to increase further - both through e-retail and wholesale. Tier II and tier III cities and towns will continue to follow the lead of the metros in that direction.

Are you planning to launch exclusive brand outlets?

We have been asked this a lot whenever we have interacted with customers or patrons. Definitely, we are keen to make our products much more accessible, and e-commerce has worked to a great extent to do that. Right now, the focus is on constant design innovation and channel development. We are exploring potential offline retail partnerships - but perhaps, the first forays we may take, there will not be exclusive brand outlets, but branded retail offerings through some of the channel partners. We are not looking at this materialising, if at all, before next year.

Lastly what are your future plans?

The plan is to constantly innovate on product and designing. More designer collaborations are in the pipeline, including them designing for us. We are very bullish about e-retail and we will be further expanding our team. We plan to start e-tailing from new portals such as Voonik, Limeroad, Fashion and You, etc. Our larger goal is to promote ethnicwear and culture seriously. We have introduced Ambassador Programme (where our own frequent customers play this part), engaging students/younger audience through Campus Ambassador Programme and various live projects, reaching out to International Audience via Triveni Saath and influencing organisations via Triveni Sang Programmes, where each and every activity or programme is diverted towards giving Indian culture its unique stand.

Published on: 11/11/2015

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.