12 February 2019
Apparel Resources
India’s promising consumer ecosystem has bolstered its image as a top emerging consumer market and the nation has become a retail magnet for some of the biggest brands in the fashion world. With a huge presence of international brands, the local retailers are struggling to find their right place. On the other side, brands like Madame from the house of Jain Amar Clothing Pvt. Ltd. (JACPL) has been creating its niche market.
Akhil Duggar Jain, Executive Director, Jain Amar, asserts: “In our 80 years of operations, JACPL has been able to create an array of six brands - Madame, Opt, NYCITI, GQ, Secret and Camla - under its umbrella, where Madame is the most premium of them. We are catering to almost all the categories under different brands owned by us and that gives us an upper hand against the other retailers in the market.”
India is witnessing some of the biggest global fashion brands entering here in the recent years through joint ventures, franchise partnerships or directly via their Indian subsidiaries or found value in partners that can extend support across the value chain from manufacturing to retail. While this surely expanded avenues of the Indian retail market, but at the expense of the local brands being exposed to an immense competition. However, with time the home-bred fashion brands like Madame has decoded its strategy to fight the competition and rise as equal as or even better than the existing foreign brands. Jain believes in being market- responsive as he maintains: “We pride in having our in-house manufacturing unit, which makes us dynamic in responding to the market demands and changing fashion trends. With a facility that enables us to restock within a span of 7 days. We turn around our stores almost 6 times a year. The stock is being rotated regularly.” Secondly, staying relevant through continuous innovation and thereby relatable to the consumers is something Madame swears by.
Jain asserts: “Being an Indian company, Madame has grown with its customers. It has been dressing up a college going girl as well as an accomplished woman with its merchandise. Its USP lies in continuously innovating its products and working at parallel roads with a lot of international brands in the segment and surviving against them.”
Madame knows its strengths and capitalize on them efficiently. The brand rules customer loyalty and has a huge market spread, along with the market know-how that the international brands surely lack.
The fast fashion brand also understands that developing strategic partnership is a crucial part that can give it an edge over larger companies. Thus, JACPL’s joint venture with Barcelona-based company Camla deals in men and womens apparel and accessories in the premium category. While Camla products get imported from Europe, this year the brand is talking to the firm for “license to manufacture its knitwear products in-house in India”.
Madame has always remained clear about working for its consumers and offering them products at par with the international brands in terms of both quality and design. “Over 90% of the production for Madame merchandise is handled in-house at our manufacturing unit in Ludhiana, which spans around 6,000 sq.ft. This enables us to assess quality of our products,” explains Jain.
Majority of its products are manufactured in-house, Madame does outsource products, which are not India’s specialty. “Some styles are difficult to be made in Ludhiana, so we do outsource the garments from outside. The main focus remains on dresses and embellishments work and heavy embroidery, which are economically not viable in-house. The outsourcing happens not only from parts of India, but also from countries like Bangladesh, Sri Lanka and China.
The overall outsourcing is meagre 2% or even less,” maintains Davinder Singh, Head- Outsourcing, Madame. The brand acknowledges that Bangladesh is the most trending hubs for garments today with “a phenomenal consistency, quality and also a great turnaround time”.
On finalising a vendor, Madame ensures to engage with a vendor, who specializes on the product it wants and can deliver the merchandise under a manageable turnaround time.
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