Financial Daily from THE HINDU group of publications
Monday, Feb 02, 2004
Financial Daily from THE HINDU group of publications Monday, Feb 02, 2004 |
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Variety
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Fashion Marketing - Retailing Chennai's own fashion street Nina Varghese
People shop for cotton dress meterials in Pantheon Road, Chennai, as the summer approaches. _ Shaju John
Chennai , Feb. 1 CHENNAI's Cotton Street has become something of an institution, says Ms A. Reema, a housewife, who shops regularly at the lane off Pantheon Road. Over the past 20 years, Pantheon lane has evolved into Cotton Street or Fashion Street, as some prefer to call it. Starting as an offshoot of the annual handloom exhibition, traders continued to sell fabrics on the lane next to the exhibition site right through the year. Today, Cotton Street has become a must for visitors to Chennai. The lane has been drawing not just the bargain hunters and the fashion conscious but also the rich and famous. On one side of the lane are pavement vendors, over 60 of them, displaying fabrics of different hues and textures. It is not unusual to see a consulate car parked in the lane with foreign visitors sauntering up and down the lane trying to mix and match fabrics. The lane comes alive from 2 p.m. when the vendors start the day by draping and colour coordinating the fabrics on stands at the back. These vendors are open for business until 8 p.m. every day. Mr A. Rajan, Secretary, Pavement Traders Association, said that each trader on an average makes around Rs 1,000 to Rs 2,000 peaking on Saturdays, Sundays and holidays. The sales go up on school holidays, he said. Another segment has started shopping here of late. Some of the large stores in the city have also started buying material from here for their store brands, Mr Rajan said. The price on the street ranges from Rs 30 to Rs 80 per metre while shirts would cost more than Rs 400. In addition, exporters bring their buyers to Cotton Street, so that they have a wide range of fabrics to select from. A salwar suit of seven meters would cost Rs 240, with room for bargaining. The material is export surplus, and not export rejects, stresses Mr Rajan. The garment export houses in and around Chennai source more material than they require from mills and power looms in Erode and Salem. After that the surplus, often hundreds of meters, hits the market. Though the traders are not complaining about business, most of them are viewing the approaching summer with some apprehension. Mr Rajan said that they had appealed to the Government to provide them with some permanent protection against the vagaries of weather.
More Stories on : Fashion | Retailing | Cotton | Tamil Nadu
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