Financial Daily from THE HINDU group of publications
Tuesday, Jul 27, 2004
Financial Daily from THE HINDU group of publications Tuesday, Jul 27, 2004 |
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Marketing
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New Products & Services Industry & Economy - Readymade Garments Variety - Fashion Vohra's Munch offers to design merchandising for apparel sector Boby Kurian
Bangalore , July 26 IT is perhaps the design talent in the Indian apparel industry asserting its place. Mr Karunesh Vohra, who recently quit as the head of design and buying, Proline, has floated a standalone design company — Munch — offering merchandise solutions to the apparel brands and the garment export market. Munch already has bagged the mandate to work on a merchandise plan for Daks' retail operations in India. Mr Vohra's team in Bangalore consists of 11 young designers from National Institute of Fashion Technology (NIFT) and hopes to service the entire merchandise grid starting from conceptualising to packaging to visual merchandising. Prior to Proline, in which Bombay Dyeing holds 51 per cent stake, Mr Vohra had a long stint with the domestic branded apparel leader, Madura Garments. Munch is funded by the Mumbai-based Phul Chand Group, a trading company which is into garmenting business through the Rs 28-crore Pratheek Apparels Pvt Ltd that caters to brands such as SF Jeans and a whole host of private labels belonging to retail chains such as Westside and LifeStyle. "We believe we are one of the first to look at the marketing potential of apparel, product and graphic designing. We have a fight to tell the world that Indians are capable of good designs, and we also have a fight to convince Indians that as Indians we are good at design. We want to play on the front foot and don't want to do business for the sake of business," Mr Vohra, CEO and Principal Designer of Munch Design Work Shop Pvt Ltd., said. The critics point out that the domestic apparel market is heavily influenced by expat designers with the homegrown talent failing to get the critical corporate backing. Interestingly, many young Indian designers in the recent past have managed training stint with fashion brands such as Diesel and are breaking into the fashion circuit in Europe with the potential to make it big commercially in the next ten years. Munch is targeting business from mainstream domestic apparel brands, private labels of retail chains, pret labels looking at the larger commercial space and from the overseas design shops, besides the garment export market in the post-quota phase when India will have to compete not just on pricing but offer value-adds. "In my opinion, most Indian companies don't have a design process in place," Mr Vohra said. Meanwhile, Munch is setting up a design resource centre, collating data on trends for the coming seasons and indexing what has worked well for the industry in the past, and a micro-manufacturing unit.
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