Working with many major brands across the globe our firm faced new challenges everyday. Catering to the requirements of the fashion industry, with its need for novelty while maintaining standards, we needed to evolve and innovate continuously and not merely keep up with the latest trends, but also lead the way and emerge as the trendsetters. There are numerous challenges that we faced in order to compete with the competitors in the industry in terms of pricing, manpower, deliveries etc. However the biggest challenge for us was to step out of our comfort zone and manufacture a product range that very few people in India could attempt.
Our company has always been catering to cost sensitive brands like ZARA, NEXT, H&M etc. I believed that with some upgradation in technology we had the power to cater to the high fashion brands. An upmarket brand ASH Italia came to India looking for a supplier to do their collection. Determined to convert my ambition into achievement I approached the brand, got in touch with their designers and convinced them that we could do the job. This was the first time we were working with such a high-end brand, it meant that our shoes would feature in all the fashion shows across France and Italy. In an effort to see this project through, I traveled across the country visiting vendors who sold specialized manufacturing machinery. I revamped the production line to meet our new requirements. It took us over six months to make prototypes and finally we came up with thirty-five styles for the fashion weeks in Europe. Ten of the thirty-five styles we featured got selected for mass production. This meant that our innovation in terms of design and creativity had paid off and we successfully entered the market for high end precision products.
Higher precision meant that we needed to retrain our existing workforce so we began a rigorous training routine and in two months 80 percent of the workers were work ready and excited to put their newly acquired skills to test.It was no mean feat to bring a resistant workforce on board. It was our creative approach of handling the resistance that produced the results we wanted to achieve.
We eventually shipped out our first consignment of ‘perfectly’ designed and crafted high end shoes. That was the most profitable season in our company’s history and we learnt many new things in terms of technology, pricing and strategy. I have always believed nothing ventured nothing gained, so it is important to innovate, design and deliver in order to be a leader and that’s exactly what we did.
