5 Pieces of Advice to Young Professionals Entering the Fashion Industry
admin
May 27, 2019
(The following is the video and the text of the Commencement Speech by Devangshu Dutta, chief executive of Third Eyesight, at the Convocation of the batch graduating in 2019 from the National Institute of Fashion Technology, Patna, India.)
I would like to just share a few learnings from my own career. I hope some of these learnings will provide you some food for thought, and if they stick, I hope they prove valuable to you in some way in your own career.
I think as a graduate of a professional institute, there are 5 life-skills or attributes or pieces of advice that could be useful to you.
Approach work in an integrative manner, not distributive: As you enter the industry, you will find that there is a tendency to specialize. Entry level roles are functionally specific. As an individual you need to make a special effort to not lose the larger perspective. As you grow in your career you will find that an ability to connect the dots and show others the bigger picture will be a more valuable skill than you can imagine today. So, if you are a designer, as about a hundred of you present here are, please spend time and effort understanding the intricacies of manufacturing, the nuances of marketing and the thrust of business development. If you are a merchandiser or a technologist, please make time to expose yourself to art, music, cinema – what might seem to you as entertainment (or even a waste of time) today will go a long way in preparing you for leadership roles, because you will be able to not only understand your own function but understand what makes the other parts of the organisation tick.
Be available to others: No matter what work you do, it is never in isolation and depends on support of your colleagues and peers, within and outside the organisation. By making yourself available to others – whether to help in a professional situation or personal – you lay the foundations for relationships that will support you through your career and your life in ways that you cannot anticipate or plan. All professional success is built on foundations laid by others. The best way to express thanks for their contributions is by making yourself available to make others succeed.
Learn. Learn. Never stop learning: As you graduate today, I hope you will have no illusion that you have learned everything you need for the rest of your career, and that you are set for life. The world is changing faster than ever, and so is the market and the industry. Make your skill set something that is refreshed all the time. If you don’t cultivate the hunger to learn, it is very likely that there will come a point in your career where you are feeling stuck and will not have the tools available to push yourself into a new trajectory or career orbit.
Have integrity: Be honest to the work that you do, be honest to the organisation that you work for, to your colleagues, to your customers, to your suppliers, to your juniors. The word “integrity” has its roots in “intact” or “whole”. When someone lacks integrity, it is as if they have a split personality – thinking or believing one way, while behaving another way. The greater the difference between the two, the more energy you will waste. If you have integrity in life, if your thoughts, words and actions are aligned, all your energy will work in the same direction. I know this could be possibly the most difficult pieces of advice I’m asking you to follow, but I think it will pay off for you in building your career.
Adopt a responsible approach towards the environment: As graduating students of NIFT you need to realise that you are becoming a part of the 2nd most polluting industry in the world after oil and gas! As India’s economic growth continues, the fashion, consumer products and retail sector are expected to grow as well. It is critical that today’s youth actually start questioning how this industry runs worldwide. Please don’t blindly accept that just because the global industry has worked in a particular way for the last 80-100 years, it is the right way. The fashion sector runs on planned obsolescence – i.e. products are planned to be discarded within a short time, even if physically and functionally there is nothing wrong with them. At a recent industry conference, I called fashion a “zombie industry” – zombies are supposed to be dead but they act as if they are alive, as they run about eating people’s brains. Don’t become another zombie in a zombie industry. Find ways to fight the waste created within and by this industry. If you can make it more sustainable, less wasteful, it is your own world that will be a better place to live in.
Thank you so much for patiently hearing me out. I hope some of the advice would have resonated with you, and will prove useful. I wish you all the very best and offer you my congratulations, on behalf of all the other alumni – welcome to the industry. Thank you!
Online grocery players BigBasket, Grofers betting big on private labels
admin
May 25, 2019
While BigBasket expects to increase its revenue from the private brands to 45 percent this year, Grofers is aiming to increase the revenue share from private labels to 60 percent by the end of this year.
Written By Varun Jain
New Delhi: Online grocery players BigBasket and Grofers are betting big on private label brands as it has become one of the largest source of revenue for these companies. BigBasket and Grofers currently witness 40 percent and 35 percent of their overall revenues coming from their own brands respectively.
While BigBasket expects to increase its revenue from the private brands to 45 percent this year, Grofers is aiming to increase the revenue share from private labels to 60 percent by the end of this year.
“Private labels or as we call them ‘G-Brands’ at Grofers, contributed to almost 35 percent of our revenue last year. At present, almost half of our sales are from our own brands’ offerings and we plan to take this number to 60 percent by the end of this year,” said Saurabh Kumar, founder of Grofers.
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The e-retailer is also looking to aggressively increase the offerings and assortments of their private brands. “There are over 800 products spread across various categories such as staples and kitchen ingredients, FMCG products, personal hygiene products like soaps, shower gels, face wash, hand wash, hand sanitizer, etc, personal care products like moisturiser and deodorants, home needs like cleaning products and furnishing items, food products and snack items, baby products and a lot more under these 8 brands. We plan to increase it to 1200 products by the end of 2020,” said Kumar.
The demand for private label brands is on a rise as consumers are seeing the value of getting the same quality product as a national brand at least 40-50 percent lesser cost, feels Kumar.
Out of 600 categories that BigBasket has on its platform, the company has private label brands in around 150 categories, according to Seshu Kumar Tirumala, national head, buying and merchandising at BigBasket.
“Every month we launch private brands in around 6-7 categories. We keep exploring when and which category we need to launch private brands. There is still a huge gap and we need to address it,” said Tirumala.
Tirumala also said around 90 percent of the agricultural commodity like rice and dal available at BigBasket is their own private brand while 100 percent of the fresh produce like fruits, vegetables, and meats are private labels.
According to Pinakiranjan Mishra, Partner and National leader, Consumer Products and Retail at EY, private brands are a good strategy for online and offline retailers provided they offer value to consumers beyond just price. This means that they should have equivalent quality, new product introductions, etc, he said.
“However retailers often underestimate the cost of private brand development,” Mishra noted further. According to industry experts, while private label brands help in building the stickiness to the customers, it also gives the retailer control over the quality and supply chain of the product apart from ensuring better gross margins.
“Private labels can fulfill one or more objectives. They have the potential to deliver better gross margins, a critical element in the thin-margin grocery business. Retailers can address specific need gaps for their customers that are not addressed by established brands. Thirdly, retailers can pitch private label at opening price points in a category, to entice consumers.
Private labels are usually, but not always, cheaper than comparable products from established brands,” said Devangshu Dutta, chief executive of a retail consultancy firm, Third Eyesight.
In the offline grocery space, one in every five products sold at the country’s biggest hypermarket chain Big Bazaar is owned by Future Consumer, a sister concern of the Kishore Biyani led Future Group.
“While we have challenged companies, especially MNCs, the customer decides to buy products or brands at our stores eventually,” Biyani, founder of Future Group told ET earlier. “There was a void in several categories since FMCG companies were not strong or didn’t invest in building them. FCL brands have filled that gap, and our aim is to have 70% share at our stores by 2022,” he had told ET.
ET had earlier this month reported that fashion e-commerce player Voonik has decided to move to fully private label business after struggling to survive independently and scaling down and downsizing staff significantly.
“We always had the plan to increase our private labels, we are now expediting it,” said Sujayath Ali, co-founder of Voonik to ET earlier. He said the company would move to a completely private label-led business in the next 3-6 months.
Juices for PMS, patches for cramps: Period care gets padded up
admin
May 25, 2019
Skincare, haircare, and now, there’s period care. While FMCG companies continue to rule the market, new players bring the promise of comfort and sustainability to women who can afford the extra buck
Written By
There are 336 million menstruating women in India, and 36% use disposable sanitary napkins, according to Menstrual Hygiene Alliance of India (MHAI). That’s 121 million women.
It’s no surprise then that the menstrual products market is growing. And fast Value.
Alibaba And Vijay Shekhar Sharma’s E-Commerce Dream Is In Trouble
admin
May 24, 2019
Paytm Mall’s market share declined to 3.4 percent in 2018 from 5.6 percent in 2017.
Written By Nishant Sharma
The cashback-based business model isn’t working for Vijay Shekar Sharma’s e-commerce venture.That’s according to a report by Forrester Inc. that also said the market share of Paytm Mall—which targeted pole position in Indian e-commerce by 2020—declined to 3.4 percent in 2018 from 5.6 percent in 2017.The Jack Ma-founded Alibaba Group Holding Ltd.—which owns 46.09 percent stake in Paytm Mall—is unwilling to fund it further, the report …
Is Amazon a friend or foe? India’s two largest retailers have divergent views
admin
May 21, 2019
Written By Sangeeta Tanwar
Two of India’s leading retail chains are currently preparing the ground for their full-fledged e-commerce forays, albeit in totally different ways.
While the Kishore Biyani-led Future Group, which operates the popular Big Bazaar hypermarket chain, is busy listing its labels on Amazon, rival Reliance Retail is withdrawing its products from all e-commerce platforms, as parent Reliance Industries (RIL) gears up to launch its own online marketplace.
For both the traditional players, cracking online sales is important as they prepare for a future beyond high street retail.
Online sales in India will balloon from last year’s $18 billion (Rs1.25 lakh crore) to $170 billion by 2030, Jefferies India predicted recently. This potential aside, Indian e-commerce is still nascent and retailers are still perfecting their strategies.
“E-commerce is now a game of two dimensions, one of scale and the other of last-mile ubiquity. Whoever gets this right, will manage growth, revenue, and customer acquisition,” said Anil V Pillai, director of the independent marketing firm Terragni Consulting.
As for the Future Group, it thinks the best way to achieve this is by riding piggyback on Amazon’s proven capabilities in scale and last-mile delivery.
How the plan evolved
In 2016, the Future Group had made its first e-commerce acquisition by buying out the struggling furniture retailer FabFurnish from its German incubator Rocket Internet. Biyani had hoped to find synergies between the startup and his group’s furniture brand Hometown.
A year later, hit by heavy losses, FabFurnish was shuttered. Biyani downplayed the move saying his losses were “compensated” as the company had learnt “enough” from the episode.
The move now to partner Amazon seems to have stemmed from that learning.
Over the past month, the two have been trying to make joint plans, including in distribution, warehousing, and creating products for Amazon and its grocery format, Pantry. Also, Future group brands, including Big Bazaar, are being aligned with Amazon Now, which promises delivery of everyday essentials within two hours, suggest media reports.
A more serious handicap will be Amazon controlling Future Group’s data and customer relationships in the partnership. “In e-commerce, ownership of customer relationship and data, which offers consumer insights, is the real asset,” points out Devangshu Dutta, CEO of Third Eyesight, a consulting firm focussed on retail and consumer products.
Vianello agrees: “When you have your own e-commerce venture, as Reliance Retail plans, you are the owner of the data and you can slice and dice it to come up with exciting product offerings and improved service experience.”
This is one of the advantages that RIL might have seen in going it alone.
Going solo
“Reliance Retail has taken a more integrated approach towards e-commerce,” observed Dutta. “The company is set to leverage its pan-India retail presence and Reliance Jio’s (RIL’s telecom business) data capabilities to roll out an e-commerce platform,” explained Dutta.
The synergy between Reliance Jio and Reliance Retail is a big advantage. The retailer has about 10,000 stores across 6,500 towns in India, while Jio has a subscriber base of 306 million. After bringing many Indians online with Jio’s affordable data offerings, Reliance now hopes to get most of them to start shopping online as well.
The challenge, though, would be in getting the last-mile delivery right. “Reliance Retail could be at a disadvantage here compared to the Future Group, which has its delivery mechanism in place courtesy its partnership with Amazon,” suggested Vianello.
Moreover, like with Jio, consumers will expect heavy discounts from Reliance’s e-commerce venture as well, which may be difficult to sustain given the initial investments. “Biyani’s (online) launch involves lower upfront costs, while Reliance Retail’s will be resource hungry since it’s an almost greenfield project,” pointed out Pillai, adding, “Reliance’s challenge is the overwhelming perception about the group being a price warrior and disrupter.”
So, which strategy will triumph? Everything comes down to execution. “Success in retail, including e-commerce, is about more and more customers choosing to transact with you repeatedly. Achieving this is a difficult and ongoing process. There are no guaranteed or permanent winners,” says Dutta.
