Bootstrapped women’s wear startup Salt Attire, which started as an online-only D2C brand, has expanded its retail presence with offline stores, and is looking at ‘robust growth’ from its offline stores. “In the previous fiscal year, our Delhi store has witnessed 60 per cent growth y-o-y. We also opened two stores in Mumbai and are looking at a growth rate of 80-90 per cent for FY 2022-23,” Dipti Tolani, Founder, Salt Attire, told FinancialExpress.com. In terms of regions, Mumbai and the rest of MMR brings in the maximum revenue for the brand. Here are the edited excerpts from the interview.
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Tell us about your current retail presence and your expansion plans. Are you also planning to explore new and increase your existing retail channels?
Currently, we have 3 experience stores – 2 in Mumbai and 1 in Delhi, and we are looking forward to expanding further. Our major focus will be on the big cities. We have been receiving a lot of incoming requests from our existing customers themselves for new categories and we are looking to explore those as well. We have done a certain product expansion during Covid, which includes more comfortable, work from home styles, etc. and we continue to build on those right now.
What percentage of your sales come from offline retail channels as compared to online channels?
We started off as a digital to consumer brand but having said that, most of our sales still come from online channels. We are slowly building the offline channel and expect an equal revenue share from both channels by the end of the year. In the previous fiscal year, our Delhi store has witnessed 60 per cent growth y-o-y. We have opened two stores in Mumbai so far and looking at a growth rate of 80-90 per cent for FY 2022-23.
How do you see the current growth in the D2C segment? How are you leveraging this growth for Salt Attire?
Customers are slowly adapting to the new age consumer brands more and more. The D2C brands are solving for a specific problem and this tends to resonate well with the new age customer. Post Covid, customers have moved to online shopping even more and they understand the relevance of the D2C brands springing up. At Salt Attire, we make sure that we resonate with the customer and make her understand the pain points that we solve for her in a way that we resonate with the customer.
How has the work wear in India changed post the pandemic? What’s the new norm now when it comes to office dressing? How are you aligned with the trend?
The onset of the Covid-19 pandemic changed everyone’s life across the globe. While the historic year will be in our memory for ways big and small, it will also be known for all the unconventional things one of them being the change it made in our work lives. A large proportion of the world saw a shift in the office culture. Working from the couch and Zoom-based meetings ruled our lives and became the new normal and traditional office wear was all but obsolete. Fast forward to 2022, we are no longer working from the comfort of our homes and our work rhythms have changed irrevocably, also making us question our workwear. Thanks to the pandemic, comfort dressing has taken over our lives. And as we go back to our work lives the freedom of heading to work in comfortable silhouettes is a must.
Do you plan to hike the prices of SALT Attire products amid rising inflation and rise in input costs? How are you maintaining your margins?
The increase in the costs has definitely affected pricing of goods and the prices across this industry and segment have increased. We have increased our prices for some items that are directly affected by the raw material price increase; however, we still try to keep it at par or optimally as compared to our competitors. In addition to this, we have re-negotiated with our existing suppliers to maintain pricing by also increasing volumes. Given all the conditions, we make sure to keep the prices optimal without affecting the quality at any point, because high quality is what we are known for as a brand. Having said that, we have increased prices for certain collections, to maintain our margins.