Regarding your tie-up with Jabong, you say online retail is the future of fashion and you are now a part of it. Any other reasons behind this venture?
There are many reasons actually, and one of them is being associated with a company like Jabong and also the fact that it?s an expansion of my own business, my brand and clientele. Online retail is a wonderful platform to retail my creations.
This gives me the opportunity to reach out to an entirely new clientele, which otherwise wouldn?t have been available to me. Now I can talk numbers, and you can?t do mass retail without numbers. It?s very difficult to have so many stores to own and run. And also, there?s this fact that we haven?t really made even the slightest compromise in the quality or styling of my collections. It?s the economies of scale that bring down prices. The numbers are large, much larger than what we do, so obviously the price per unit comes down. And I think for me, and my philosophy of designing and expanding my brand, one of the biggest challenges is definitely to try and reach out to as many people as possible. I am actually excited when I see more and more people wearing my clothes. It?s also a sign of success for a designer to try and take his collections to as many people as possible.
You say you have not compromised at all on quality for the Jabong collection. So do you have the same sourcing base, workshops and craftsmen for these clothes as you have for your designerwear?
Obviously, the designing part is with me, and will be done in-house. The production will be handled by Jabong. But we can share our sources and our resources with Jabong, so that there is no compromise on the design, as well as the quality of the products. At the end of the day, what customers buy is going to have a Rohit Bal label on it and so they will expect
high standards.
When you say Jabong is going to handle the production, could you clearly underline what exactly is it that you are doing here and what exactly are the Jabong guys doing?
I am the designer of my collections, and the collections will be sampled by us. We are handing over the prototypes of every single piece and any kind of required input to produce and manufacture that piece to Jabong. Jabong is going to take care of all the manufacturing and sourcing. The creative will be with me, the marketing will be with Jabong…but every single piece will be approved by me finally.
So the material, the fabric and other accessories are all being sourced by Jabong for mass production?
It will be sourced by Jabong through our sources, but Jabong will be the one to do it.
What image do you have in mind of a typical consumer when you are designing for platforms like Jabong, Biba, etc?
With Jabong, the brief was quite clear. They wanted a niche segment of the consumer in the age group of 25-35 years. These are young executives and outgoing people who are working and are upwardly mobile. They are the kind of people who have to go to work, then maybe to a conclave or a conference and to events. They are the people who need to look good all the time, but they cannot afford expensive designerwear; people with aspirations. India is among the countries having the world?s youngest populations… it is the new India?s clientele that I want to reach out to.
How easy or difficult was it for you to shift to a frame of mind for designing clothes symbolising the average woman on the street, the working people, the middle class?
Well, I don?t know if the collection is strictly going to be for the average person on the street, to be honest… I also don?t think if they are going to be called cheaper. This collection would probably be for people who can afford to buy these outfits out of their normal monthly budgets, people who can afford to spend R6,000 to R10,000 per outfit. These outfits are very stylish, they are not outfits that you are buying for one season and throwing away the next. It?s always a challenge to do something new, especially if we try to do something at a much lower price, and try to make it look very similar to what we do for our couture collection. That is always a challenge, but it?s a challenge which I am very happy to accept.
Designing for a mass audience and designing your couture line?a lot of other designers are also getting into mass retail. But can designers sustain straddling both these genres?
I think if they can?t, they are basically not designers. In our country, there are only so many people who can afford to buy our couture collections. I mean the future of fashion or any product is in numbers. We obviously have to think about broadening our brand when it comes to more people. So I think any designer who wants to think about expanding his brand has to start doing ready-to-wear and think in numbers. There are too few people who can afford to buy a couture collection. You have got to
think ahead.
But do you think it affects your brand value? There is an image in people?s mind as to what a typical Rohit Bal creation would be?the style, the materials used, the fabrics, the colours. Is there a dilution, do you fear that?
Take any product in the luxury segment, say, the Mercedes-Benz. It has an ?S? class, which is top-of-the-line; that?s what people buy, it?s got more respect. But Mercedes has a ?E? class, ?C? class, and now it has an ?A? class, even a ?B? class. So even if more people can afford to buy the ?B?, it doesn?t mean that people will stop buying the ?S?. As long as the product is great, their brand is only going to gain more respect… Similarly, a person who has come to buy an original Rohit Bal will continue to do so.
Can you see tie-ups of these kind becoming more profitable in the long run as compared to exclusive collections?
I think the profitability of these tie-ups, if handled correctly, can become much bigger than our couture collection. It could become huge. If you look at the mass retail brands in the world and in India, they are far more successful than the individual designers… It is because it gives them the numbers…
So is this tie-up with Jabong an exclusive one or are you open to similar collaborations with other online portals?
Before I signed up with Jabong, I was already working with some other websites, whom I?ll continue to work with. But now that I have signed up with Jabong, I will not be signing up with any other website that is in direct competition to them, at least for the first few seasons. What I?ll be doing for Jabong, I will not be doing for anybody else.
In your agreement with Jabong, do you have a clause that says you won?t design for rival portals?
I won?t be signing with any portal that is in direct competition with Jabong, at least for the time being.
