Interview with Marc A Lewkowitz

With a population of 1.2 billion people, a demographic that is changing quickly and a growing middle class, I think there is a lot of opportunity for brands to establish a position in the Indian market. I know we need to be in the Indian market early, and work with great partner brands to position the recognition of Supima cotton. Supima cotton is not readily recognised when it comes to a readymade marketplace. The Egyptian name is readily recognised in India. But unfortunately, there is no control over that labelling. This cotton variant does not refer to any standard in terms of quality or authenticity. In Egypt, they grow everything from extra long staple (ELS) to very short staple. That is what sets Supima apart, because it refers to 100 per cent American-grown Pima which is ELS. The amount of cotton available in Egypt is again pretty less. Their long staple production is down 30 per cent. The ELS production in Egypt is only going to be 1300 tons this year, which is nothing as compared to the past. US production of ELS is down as well, almost down to 400,000 bales of production. But in comparison to 1300 tons, our production is much larger. I think we will have to educate consumers about the quality of fibres with our partners. We did some DNA testing on products back in the US. We tested 40 different products from retail store shelves that were all labelled as 100 per cent Pima cotton. Pima cotton is supposed to represent ELS cotton. But in the tests that we conducted, we found that only 10 per cent of the products were authentic. Sixty-seven per cent were blends, I.e. ELS and upland cotton. Twenty-three per cent were completely upland cotton, and there were no ELS in them at all. So, 90 per cent of the products that we tested, which were legally labelled as Pima, were non-compliant. This is what we have to fight. We have a supply chain that calls an illegitimate variant as Pima. Price is always a challenge, be it high or low. India is still a nascent market in terms of retail, branding and growth. There is so much of an online focus. There are companies who are only into digital marketing which is different from what we do in the US. Identifying and locating a specific audience and the right partner brand, who understands the value of quality is a challenge. It's hard finding a right partner who understands that we are bringing a superior cotton variant in the best price that we can.

In India, we only wish to work with licensees. Be it spinner, weaver, knitter, garment-maker or even brands in the supply chain, we want to make sure that everything is coming through a licensed supplier. As you source our product, we track invoices to show the product moving from one to another place. We are working on a database which will enable that to happen electronically. Companies can log-in to a portal with their credentials, and keep a track of their purchased products. This will add to transparency. We are doing DNA testing in our lab in New York, and they are putting up a facility in India, which will be huge. This might change the face of the industry, as everybody will know that they can be checked. And once this happens, if a few get caught, it will bring in a lot of changes in the supply chain. And we realise that everybody in the supply chain is pretty supportive towards this, and they actually want this checking to happen.

It takes a tremendous effort to reach out to the final consumers. We do it in partnership with our brands. I am here with Brooks Brothers who are our premier partners and one of the many brands who understand the true value of Supima. They now have seven stores in India. Brooks Brothers came to us last December, and said that they propose a 360 degree marketing campaign - both online and offline marketing. They picked two markets in the US (New York and San Francisco) and one market in Canada (Toronto) for the same because of the concentration of populous, amount of industries, consumer base and tourism. They made sure that all the people in New York see the ad of Supima and Brooks Brothers at least once or twice in a day for the entire month of March. That is an aggressive marketing campaign. It's not easy. It takes a lot of work. And in the partnership, we learned a lot of things.

It's certainly gone down in the US. We are down around 25 per cent this year, because of the drought conditions. So everybody has pulled back, be it consumers, traders or manufacturers. But weather forecasts are keeping everybody optimistic. If we have sufficient rains, we might see a 50 per cent increase in the production next year. We have to be optimistic. If we are not, we should not be in the business right?