My father has been the inspiration behind all my choices. I grew up in awe of him as I watched him run his footwear manufacturing business. Over excursions to the factory and official conversations, I grew more and more interested in the general business scenario, marketing and brand management. The fashion industry with its ever changing trends in itself seemed very interesting, so as soon as I completed my graduation I joined our family business.

I spent the first year gaining a thorough understanding of the product and various manufacturing processes. However, I always wanted to add value to the system and bring in something different that would help our business grow faster. But, in order to introduce new systems and ideas it was very important to first understand the current systems that were in place.

During my second year as marketing manager I travelled to Europe to gain first hand marketing experience. I got a chance to build relationships with our existing clients and introduce our company to new potential clients. This was a great learning experience and gave a boost to my marketing and negotiation skills. Also, during this year I decided to take up the challenge of introducing a personalized ERP to our firm, as it would make our work a lot more systematic and efficient.  This challenge helped me brush up on my software and process flow management skills that I had acquired during my computer science engineering program.

By the end of 2011 we had enough orders and capacity to plan a public listing of the company at the stock exchange. This meant that if we performed well, we would grab the attention of the big financial investors. I have always wanted to understand the processes and the criteria big private equity, mutual funds and hedge funds use to determine huge investments. To help me gain first hand knowledge of the process I moved to Shanghai for 5 months to join an investment research firm based out of London. During this period I was in touch with top 50 mutual funds and private equity firms across the globe and got a chance to understand their working procedures. It helped me grasp the various aspects the investors look at before investing heavily in a publically listed firm and I gained valuable experience of working in a multinational company.

After completing three years of working in my firm, understanding the product and the various procedures, I now plan to improve my business innovation and entrepreneurship skills and at the same time work on my marketing and operational fundamentals that are vital to be a good manager. I believe that an MBA will give me a chance to understand various aspects of business administration and give me the confidence to take our company to newer and unprecedented levels of success.

For many years I have been associated with many social and charitable foundations in India. However, when I joined my family business I had a chance to be directly involved with the lives of our 1000+ workers. We clearly understood that our main goal was not only generating profits for our company but also at the same time we aimed to add value to the lives of our workforce.

With that in mind we started the employee training and hospitality program. With an initial investment of $10,000 the main goal of this program was to train the current employees to gain better working skills and at the same time we planned to dedicate a part of our profits into building an on campus housing for our employees.

The program was open to all managerial and job shop employees. The first part of the program was aimed at analyzing the current job skill level of the employees and then according to the results we allocated them to different mentoring programs. We held voluntary 2-3 hours of workshop post working hours every week. The program ran on a semi annual basis with a skill test at the end of each semi annual period. As we expected, more than 80% of our current workforce registered for our program and we received a positive feedback from the employees with respect to our initiative.

We hired 2 training professionals who were given the responsibility for conducting various class such as : English speaking, reading , writing, stitching, lasting and other product specific skills.

This training program was very valuable to the employees because the programs gave them an extra skill set and increased their chances of securing a promotion and at the same time the program gave everyone a chance to interact with each other post working hours. We added a mix of team building exercises in the program to make sure the program was interesting over the length of 6 months.

At the same time we finalized a plan for on campus accommodation for the employees. We ran a company wide survey to get an idea of the basic employee needs and got the approval from board of directors for our plan.

The plan was huge success and generated positive reviews from both within and outside the company. Using this plan we were able to establish a company wide culture that was unmatched in the industry. At the same time this helped our employees gain better recognition in the society and with the management within the company.  The “skill set” plan resulted in 25 promotions within the first year and 10 percent of our workforce could read and write basic English. Such an initiative also increased the employee confidence in the company and at the same time we had a better workforce that respected the companies human resource policies. The plan is currently in the third year of implementation and I am sure it will continue to add value to our company in the coming years.

In my second year of working with Oscar Leathers Pvt Ltd. I was given a task to survey the domestic Indian market and chalk out the feasibility of launching our own domestic brand.  The company had tried the same on numerous occasions before but couldn’t see it through because of the stiff completion from the people who were importing the goods from China and selling similar products at very competitive prices.  To lock heads with the traders who have been in the market for over a decade required a lot of courage and perseverance. I was determined to see this through because this was a very important aspect of marketing our production unit.

We conducted a swat analysis and came up with a solution to give us a competitive edge. Since our product was a higher quality niche pure leather product our plan was to convince the customers by putting forward the advantages of buying a pure leather product. However, the most ignored sector in the Indian retail industry is the after sales service and we wanted to use this to our advantage.  We knew that we had to come up with a plan to keep the customer happy by providing exceptional after sales service. We decided to give a 1 year warrantee on our product’s. None of the importers could use this strategy because of the inferior quality of the product they were importing from China.

We tested the waters and launched a weeklong advertisement campaign on all social networks, local radio channels and newspapers. We invited friends and government officials to the opening of our store.  We strategically decided to open on the festive day of Diwali, which marks a new beginning on the Indian calendar. We could feel the momentum around us and we knew if we could  make a break through  in the Indian market despite the stiff price completion.

The brand “TOES” was officially launched in the month of October 2011 and was an instant hit. The brand exceeded our sales target of INR 10 million in the first year from a single retail shop.  Our perseverance and courage to do what no other local manufacturer had done finally produced results.  The company now plans to open new stores across five metros in India by the end of December 2013.

This was very special learning experience in many ways.  I learnt that with the correct fundamentals and strategy all barriers could be broken. I displayed exceptional team management skills and worked across different verticals to achieve a common goal. Critical decision making during the course of the project gave my confidence a boost in terms of decision making.  I learnt the key principals of product pricing and brand management that gave us a unique identity amongst our customers. To ensure that we meet our targets for the future I have assigned an independent team to manage the product development and marketing. I am sure our brand will grow from strength to strength in the years to come.

The industry sector I chose to look at was is the footwear manufacturing industry. Our family has been associated with this industry for over 16years. My family owns a footwear manufacturing company in India and we have been catering to clients like ZARA,NEXT,H&M etc for over a decade.

This is relevant to my career because I have over 4 years of work experience in this industry. I joined our family business after my graduation as a marketing manager and directly managed the top 4 major clients for the company. The fashion industry is an ever changing industry which makes it extremely competitive. I faced new challenges everyday and needed to constantly innovate in order to find efficient solutions. The dynamics of the industry in particular excite me and I enjoy the challenge of marketing our products across different countries

The most important fact I came across during my research states that imports from foreign countries account for 95% of the domestic demand of  footwear in the US. Due to the labour intensive nature of the industry this trend is expected to grow further at 4.4% annually.

Over the past five years the footwear retail revenues have dropped at an effective 0.4 percent however as the economy is showing signs of recovery the revenue is expected to increase by 2 percent in 2013. Retailers over the years have put a lot of pressure on wholesalers and manufactures to cut costs resulting in a drop in overall industry revenue.

The key players in the industry are Nike and Adidas with 13.7$ and 8.6% of the market share respectively. The price of the shoes is directly proportional to the demand and the slow economic recovery has restricted the demand of shoes over the past 5 years however the prices saw an increase in 2012 and are expected to grow in 2013 at 1.9% per annum.

Since we own a manufacturing unit is it very important to know if there is an upward import trend in the footwear industry in the US. It is also interesting to learn how the change in economic conditions affects the footwear industry. I plan to go back to the fashion industry after my MBA. I understand the manufacturing industry in Asia I want to help major retailer is North America source footwear from India,China etc. I have an experience of managing a production unit therefore I can add value to the manufacturing industry in US and Canada. On the other hand I can use the key findings and knowledge of the market in US to help plan a business strategy for the exporters in Asia.

Sources : ibisworld.com