Interview with Shailesh Saraf

Shailesh Saraf
Managing Director
Triveni & Sakambari Silk Mills

Beginning to see a revival of interest in ethnicwear

In 1985, Mr Giridhar Saraf moved to Surat, to setup Sakambari Silk Mills. Sakambari manufactured synthetic sarees under the brand name "Triveni Sarees". Today, TriveniSarees.com, which was established in 2011, takes the fabulous Triveni collection worldwide. Shailesh Saraf, Managing Director, Triveni & Sakambari Silk Mills, opens up about the challenges and the opportunities of going online with his business.

How would you describe the online market for ethnicwear in the domestic and the international set-up?

Indian ethnicwear market is growing globally, fuelled by general curiosity about India and the influence of diasporas. Domestically of course, this is a part of the larger e-commerce growth story we have been

witnessing for the last 5 years.

As a pattern, apparel and fashion goes online after books and electronics. That this is a fast growing e-retail segment is a testimony to the e-commerce industry now evolving to a level of maturity.

You promote your collections extensively on social media platforms like Facebook and Twitter. What is the percentage of leads and sales conversions generated through such channels?

Social media helps keep our customers and clients informed about new collection releases, new updates and activities at Triveni. Most of the direct purchase leads are retail leads, or many home based re-sellers who reach out to us. Probably 5 per cent of new customers are generated through social media. Triveni is multi-channel - and is present strongly on all digital platforms and offline, and sees a strong traction coming in from other digital channels - including organic searches.

For our wholesalers and distributors, social media is again a way for us to keep them engaged - some new distributor or wholesale leads do come once in a while (probably less than 1 per cent).

What kind of features on the web and mobile make the online shopping experiences better? Do you plan to introduce any new ones?

Product offering and app or site speed are most crucial features in the ordering/shopping process, and then - product quality and services becomes important.

Specifically, for a draped garment like saris, two challenges - common for apparels otherwise, gets more complex. First, is the look of the garment on the prospective customer, after it gets draped or worn. With jackets, shirts or even a dress the look is still al little obvious but not so for a sari.

Second are selecting or shortlisting products from the huge offering range, based on certain criteria or similar to specific designs.

Triveni has worked on some proprietary technologies for Virtual Trial room that works fine even for saris and image-based similar results. These will help users navigate through the wide offering much better, and improve the shopping experience quite a bit.

Which styles are trending for the festive season for men, women, and kids?

Clear dignified collections - based on georgettes, chiffons, brassos or jacquards, with exquisite embroidery or border work have been faring well especially for women. Colour contrasts, with subdued hues on the garment body and a bit of brighter ones for the highlights and patterns have been the norm. Styling and heavy all over surface work has moved to blouses.

We have worked a lot on subdued prints - geometrical or floral, with elements of brighter colours and borders added in.

Our collections have focused on loose silhouettes, interesting drapes, and blouses that are further inspired by Jaipuri Kurtis or tops. We experimented with a few lehenga-gown collections that have seen great response too.

Which regions in India and abroad do you generate the most sales from?

We wholesale pan-India, and we have seen strong uptake countrywide. A few years ago, customer preferences were distinctly different in all parts of India - but of late, they have converged.

Aspiration levels of someone sitting in a tier III town are similar to those of someone in South Delhi or South Mumbai, in spite of SEC category. Television, bollywood and Internet have made new trends and fashion is accessible to all.

Instead, local influences show up more in the designs themselves - with collections borrowing elements of Madhubani paintings, Ikat work, Chanderis, Kutchhi mirrow work and more. As a design house, we try to ensure our designs cover all potential inspirations.

Specific regions - especially for saris, the usual traditional bastions for sari are there of course - Central and South India - UP, MP, Bihar, Maharashtra, Tamil Nadu, and Karnataka etc - but other regions do make up a significant part of the sales.

What are the 3 major challenges of selling ethnicwear online?

Selling ethnicwear online selling has a few challenges:

1. Ethnicwear industry has been very fragmented, and brands are only starting to emerge. Customers are unaware of the brands fully yet - and are often driven to low quality products purely on discounts. Intellectual property enforcement in this sector is weak - with the number of styles and their shelf time, it's practically impossible to copyright each of them. This has led to a number of replica sellers - those who take an original brand design and make a significantly compromised version of it and sell online at a lower cost - using the original brand's image.

2. Traditionally, ethnicwear has been brought on touch and feel in physical retail stores. With emergence of brands with clearly recognised quality, this challenge too is getting sorted out.

3. e-Retail industry has been venture capital driven - and unviable discounts have made it difficult for more organically built business models to compete with the funded start-ups.

Any plans to launch an App to access your product lines

Triveni already has an App - available on both, Android & iOS (works on iPad as well).

Which markets do you source your yarn, fabric, machinery, accessories from?

Triveni's production is setup in Surat - and there's an entire eco-system of weavers, dyeing, printing and embroidery unit to support our work. Triveni too does a mix of steps in-house and outsourced - closely working with the suppliers and vendors.

Usually, weavers develop the fabrics - sourcing the yarns locally or outside. Triveni works closely with the weavers to understand their fabric ranges, propose its ideas - and work on the fabrics they weave - or as per its requirement as per the sampling done.

Laces and other accessories are also similarly worked with the vendors/embroidery units - the samples or designs are provided by Triveni, and the final fabric is worked out mutually. Machines used by these units are sourced either from China (especially the embroidery and new weaving machines), and the dyeing and printing machines from Germany or Korea.

What is your design team like?

Triveni's design team consists of formally trained designers - usually from NIFTs or top design institutes of the country. We work closely with design institutes of the country - going for campus recruitment, and also run ethnicwear design contests with them.

In addition to the full-time designers at Triveni, there a set of sketchers, embroidery machine punchers and tailors (for sampling). Design process begins with concept and forecasting that gets translated into sketches. These sketches are then split component-wise, further sketched/punched into the embroidery machine software or designs for printing. The individual pieces are then sampled by closely partnering with embroidery or printing units - and the tailoring them puts the final sample together.

At every stage - from concept to sample - I personally review the designs, filtering them out. The designs finally going into production and are thus hand-picked.

How many stylists do you have and what role do they play in showcasing your product lines?

Styling starts with the product design and construction - and the design team has been trained to do the product design with styling. Mannequin drapes help in formulating the full look.

Photo-cataloging the image is a very vital part of product marketing - with me personally being a part of most of the catalogue shoots. Most of the samples are prior shared with the photo studio/production houses we work with. These production houses have worked with us for years - and they bring on-board a stylist and make-up artist that understands Triveni's preferences. This team is part of the photo shoots, and is instrumental in giving the stylish looks we see.

What has been your growth story in the last 2 years? What is the targeted growth for the next two?

Triveni's offline reach has increased over the last couple of years, covering all the major areas of the country. We have more than 100 wholesalers and distributors across the country, in addition to more than 1000 buyers - who together supply to more than 10,000 retailers stocking Triveni. A team of full-time salesmen (supplemented by quite a few summer interns in summer) work with our distributors and wholesalers - reaching retailers across the board. In addition, the retailers are kept in loop usually by WhatsApp, Facebook and e-mail.

As an organization, cutting edge innovation in designs, consolidation of our operations, water tight production deliveries have been the focus over the last few years and tight filtering on buyers has been the key focus over the last couple of years. With these now in place - and new collections seeing a very very strong uptake from buyers, we expect about good year on year growth in the next couple of years and even beyond.

What major factors do you take into account while deciding your Key Performance Indicators (KPI)?

KPIs are first decided for the organisation, and then - they are mapped to the individual team members. Organisation's KPIs are linked to sales, inventory and payment collections. This translates into individual teamwise KPIs as follows:

1. Design team: Number of new samples and designs made, the number of these finally approved

2. Production team: Timely delivery of the final production orders as per original commitment -this means closely monitoring each step of the production

3. Sales team: Sell through of all the new catalogues and production, and the quality of payment collections from the wholesalers and distributors.

The above are some representative KPIs - these are further translated into each individual team to the personnel level.

Published on: 28/11/2016

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.