Get this look: Sculpted Dhoti

I used to have a problem with the way media, and fashion magazines in particular, sell products. The cosmetics section in every magazine is cleverly called the “beauty” section (you’re not beautiful this month if you don’t wear xxx eyeshadow), and the writing on fashion and lifestyle almost makes you feel frumpy for not wearing the latest fashion trend (on their list of essentials this winter is a 42k wool cardigan) or not using words like staycation. Of course this could just be a case of sour grapes because every attempt I’ve made to get Brass Tacks featured in Vogue has been in vain. The closest I’ve come is Lavanya Nalli wearing one of my tops in her feature (thank you, Lavanya).

left: Lavanya Nalli in Vogue Magazine; right: "Swatches" from the Spring '09 collection.

But truth be told (and I like to tell the truth), I have a much better understanding for how the industry works now that I too have a product to sell. It’s not always about selling reality- it’s about creating a fantasy and giving people something cool or glamorous to aspire for. Owning the product is not the fantasy, but using/wearing it should make the owner feel a part of the fantasy.

Fashion shouldn’t be rigid in its instructions on what to wear and what not to wear. After all in an ideal world we should all wear something that is representative of our inner selves- and how homogeneous would the world be if we all shifted from one trend to another at the same time? Fashion can however open our minds to other forms of self-expression. Up until recently I never used to pay attention to fashion trends and I always focused on the overall look of a garment while designing. My new found insight has now taught me that it’s not only about the look, it’s about the feeling as well; I need to design clothes that make the wearer look and feel good.

"Sculpted Dhoti", in burnt orange and olive from the Winter '09 Collection.

Inspired by all the Harem and Turkish and Dhoti pants I’ve been seeing in magazines, I made my own pair of dhoti pants for this winter collection. I’ve always felt that this look is perfect for Indian women who are confident and proud enough to embrace their hips, and I really think it has a lot more attitude then a cocktail dress. So come over to my store and get this look- it can only help your stylish staycation get better. Oh and don’t forget to rock it with a pair of heels and a glass of single malt in hand. That’s right, Single malt is the new Mojito.

Okay, I’ll stop now.

Getting Back on Track

For once, hearing multiple opinions about my work has given me clarity and re-affirmed my faith in my original goals. A couple of weekends ago I went to Mumbai and met with fashion boutique owners to get feedback on my collections and design sensibilities. Most of the store owners said they liked my clothes but that it didn't fit in with the rest of the collections in their store. I understand where they are coming from- if someone walked into a high-end store willing to spend upwards of Rs 5000 on a garment, they wouldn’t want something simple looking (no matter how well cut or well tailored). One store owner added that women in Mumbai get put off by cotton!

At first I hid under the shelter of my brand positioning and stereotypes about Mumbai and Delhi (which is that they are into bling and my brand is far from that). Honestly however, there is a lot of creativity out there that has nothing to do with bling in the high-end fashion market. I came back from Mumbai wishing that my clothes were just as creative (rather than safe) and wondering if I should tap into the high-end market to make some money. But the truth of the matter is that Mumbai and Chennai are very different markets, and I am much more excited about designing affordable well-cut clothes made from high-quality handwoven textiles rather than a few high-end pieces. At the same time, I would be lying if I said that making money isn’t starting to become a pressure – hopefully that will change once I earn some!

My trouble and difficulty now lies with being in Chennai and figuring out my initial market here. I’ve talked about this before- how my fabrics appeal to older women who appreciate the textiles of traditional sarees but the cuts and silhouettes appeal to younger women. While I am trying hard to incorporate brighter colours and a good mix of traditional and modern textile designs in my collections, the toughest part is choosing which styles (cuts and silhouettes) to make. I get the feeling that women want something different, but not too different, and figuring out the fine line between Unique and "too different" is a lot tougher than it may seem. The halter dress (Black Orchid from the Monsoon collection) is young in style and many women liked bought it but many also said that it was too dressy and that they don’t have an occasion to wear it to. The sand washed cowl neck tops always do well, but cowl necks have now become a Brass Tacks staple and they are so safe! Snapdragon, one of my personal favourites, has a fitted torso and a wide sleeve and while customers love the fit, they prefer a regular cap sleeve rather than a wide one. What if I had made it with an ordinary cap sleeve though- wouldn’t that have made the top too ordinary?

I’m happy to hear suggestions on how to walk this tightrope, and in the meantime here is a photo of a blue ikat fabric in silk that I bought in Hyderabad to make Black Orchid (in blue).

Drying on my balcony (yes, I washed it myself).

At the store when I bought it.

Big Picture with Little Details

In my most focused moments at work, I am a bit neurotic about little details. I look at a garment and scream when one arm hole looks bigger than the other, and I walk into my store and remind myself to take deep breaths when I see paint peeling off the walls (I’ll never get to the bottom of that annoying leakage problem). I often get annoyed when people tell me that these little details are not important and it’s the big picture that matters. But to me the details are everything and without that you have nothing! Of course when I’m feeling less neurotic or a bit lazy then I’m able to shrug it off (told you not to sweat the small stuff), but of late I’ve realized that it’s not about small details versus the big picture. The two go hand in hand and it is vital to keep switching back and forth to stay on track (and to maintain your sanity).

I don’t know why it took me so long to realize this- it does seem like intuitive common sense after all- but two incidents last week helped me arrive at this conclusion. The first was an exchange between Mala Sinha of Bodhi and me. I wrote a post about Mala last year when I visited her workshop in Baroda. Recently I wanted to place an order with her and I was so impressed to receive these “strike offs” in the print I had asked for with various colour options. I had asked for this print (shown below) in indigo on tussar fabric. Before going into production, Mala sent me a few options including her personal recommendation (indigo on light blue) that ended up looking much nicer than what I had originally ordered. How many printers will take that kind of trouble to show you a different colour options on the fabric you want? Most of them will just tell you that different fabrics absorb colour differently and that you should not expect a 100% colour match.


(Mala's strike offs. The right most one was her recommendation).

Thinking about Mala’s service made me realize that for every one of her buyers who places an order, there must be at least ten others who ask for different colour variations but don’t follow up with an order. Providing that service to everyone must take up a lot of time and effort, however if she didn’t provide that service, then she might not have people like me writing about her or a set of loyal customers who appreciate her consistent good quality. Taking effort over the little details does pay off in this case.

The second incident was a mildly unpleasant experience with a retail store last month after which I realized that if I don’t think about the bigger picture and the long run, then I might be setting myself up for more experiences similar to this one. The experience in question had to do with the retail store not taking enough care about the little details that really matter (like sales statements and listing of inventory with a clear system for summing up totals, calculating commission, etc). At my own store when I see details left out of the accounts book or the inventory book (yes, it’s still handwritten but we’re going electronic in a month) I freak out and make sure my staff corrects the mistakes immediately. But we do have a system in place and my sales assistants know the importance of maintaining these records for our internal checks. How do businesses manage to grow if they are not picky about these little details? So instead of being impatient to make money and retailing in other cities, I need to do more homework and work with someone who gets the little details in the bigger scheme of things. Plus it doesn't hurt to have some terms and conditions agreed upon in writing.

Now that I finally get this big-picture-little-details logic, I need to figure out a way to keep reminding myself of it.

Shout Outs

I never imagined the ways in which running a business would affect the way I think about people interactions and social skills. I’m usually pretty good at exhaling at the end of a day and not taking things people do or say personally, but one thing I am still working on is gratitude: giving it and not expecting it.

There have been a few incidents, since the time I started, when I have bent backwards to make an order or an alteration happen in less than 24 hours, or door delivered garments (for free) without any thanks or acknowledgment from the customer. I know this attitude is not at all conducive to good customer service, but hey, I’m allowed to be human once in a while (and that’s what this blog is for anyway). These gymnastics also affect the way I treat incompetent customer service representatives at other businesses (“if I can bend backwards to make it happen, why can’t you?”), not realizing that their sales staff don’t own their business so the situation is not comparable.

As for my customers, I know they aren’t obliged to give me business, and if good service is what it takes to keep them coming back to my store, then so be it. It’s just that sometimes it’s hard coming to terms with the fact that it takes years to build a good reputation that can be destroyed very quickly if a few people have a bad experience.

In the spirit of thanks and of acknowledging important influences, I want to give a big shout out to Fabindia right here in this blog post. Fabindia is now an amazing empire with over 100 stores in India, and although a lot of people complain about the lack of great service, the lack of standard sizing and the sometimes poor quality, no one gives them credit for what they are really doing. Aside from providing relatively inexpensive traditional crafts, beauty and bath products and organic food products (their chapati atta is pretty good by the way), to me their real service has been cultivating good taste. If you think about how people’s aesthetic taste evolves, their surroundings and their exposure at a young age play a huge role. By making handwoven and printed textiles accessible to a wide range of income groups, Fabindia has reached out to generations of Indians and tourists and made them excited about Indian crafts. In the process, it has also built the foundation for brands like mine that rely on the assumption that Indian women like traditional fabrics. And thanks to Fabindia, many craftsmen still practice their art because they’ve had constant demand for their work from this amazing empire!

2nd Birthday

On August 10th my store turned two. This past year has been amazing in terms of learning experiences, growth and also creativity. I feel I am closer to finding my voice, I’m reaching out to more Brass Tacks customers, and I’m also incorporating suggestions without having to compromise on my creativity. Of course I’ve had some downs – perhaps a couple of downs for every up – but overall I’m really happy with the way things are going, and so grateful to everyone who has helped along the way.

During my sale last year I was surprised to see the overwhelming response; customers trooped in and out throughout the day and on the first day I sold around 40 pieces. Not all those pieces were on sale, which led me to believe that announcing a sale is also a way to remind customers that you exist.

I had a similar experience this year, selling 100 pieces in the first two days of the sale, but now I’m learning more from these sales. I think people are more willing to buy something they consider expensive if they know they can also get great value for money on some other pieces. So someone would rather buy one dress for Rs 2000 along with 2 tops for Rs 500 each, rather than one evening dress for Rs 3000. Intuitively that does make sense, but I just never thought along those lines before. Observing customers in the store is a lot more conducive to understanding their rationale than sitting in front of an excel sheet (which is how I do my pricing).

I’m now ready to try out a pricing experiment with my upcoming Monsoon collection. I want to see how I can spread my production cost across my collection to allow for some garments to be less expensive than others. Before it was an even distribution, but now it will be according to level of complexity. The simpler garments will end up being less expensive, but the more complicated ones with a lot of tailoring details will work out to be more expensive.

Getting back to the sale, things were going too well for that Corporation Shopping Complex (I’m already battling a case with a leakage in the building and no drainage on the street for rain water), so on Tuesday afternoon at 3pm the electricity went off. My inverter carried us through to the end of the day (without the air conditioner though) but all of Wednesday we had no power. One of the power lines had burnt, affecting 5 shops in the building and as luck would have it mine was one of them. The corporation waited for a few hours on Tuesday before declaring that it was too dark to start work that day. On Wednesday they hired electricians and labourers to dig up the road to find the burnt cable, which they finally found at around 6pm that day. Still giddy from Sunday’s sales, I went up to them filled with naïve enthusiasm and asked, “So it will be fixed by tonight, right”?

Electrician: Well now that we’ve found it there’s little left to do. If we don’t finish it tonight then it will take only 30 minutes to complete in the morning.

Me: Great, I’m so glad. We’ve lost out on a lot of sales because of no power today.

Electrician: The thing is, tomorrow is a government holiday, and Independence day is coming up on Saturday, so we were hoping to get a long weekend starting from this evening….

Note: To compensate for days lost without power, after Independence day on Saturday (we will be closed on August 15th), we will continue with the sale for another week.

Waiting and Watching

Last week has been exhausting with my launch at Daaram and then a busy week here in Chennai without a break. But it has been worth it and I feel as if I’ve learned a thing or two about myself as well as about Brass Tacks.

Daaram pulls in an interesting crowd. The store is very particular that they retail only handloom products so rather than sharing a common socio-economic background, their customers share a common interest. Having said that, the look and a price of a product does determine your market, and Daaram’s clothes are very straightforward and their prices are low (tops start at Rs 250 and their most expensive kurta is Rs 1100).

The really great thing for me is that the store has a lot of people walking in everyday, and by sheer numbers even if a few of them are interested in Brass Tacks, that’s a good start for me. The feedback I got from many customers was indicative that Daaram and I are yet to reach out to the kind of person who will wear Brass Tacks. Many of the women felt the clothes were “too western” (the tops were too short- i.e. not covering the hip like a kurti), too many of them were sleeveless, or the prices were too high. Still, there were quite a few young women who came in, tried on many pieces and bought a few.

At first my expectations were really high (note to self: stop doing that!) but by the last day I had gone to the other extreme, feeling really skeptical about things sales picking up. I had to remind myself that things were not so different at my own store when I started out. The partners at Daaram seem very confident that Brass Tacks will do well and that there is a demand for that genre of clothing. It’s just a question of time and reaching out to the kind of people who are into tailored clothing with interesting (and sometimes quirky) details. And so much for creating such a strong distinction between a Daaram and a Brass Tacks customer- many women were happy to buy both, which means I am still figuring out who my customer is.

Another interesting thing I noticed is that being surrounded by so much handwoven fabric in subtle colours made me think about designs that are a bit…well, less tailored than the usual Brass Tacks look. I often get inspiration for designs from the fabric itself, and mill made fabrics or handwoven fabrics in mercerized cotton lend themselves very well to crisp, tailored, fitted clothing. But the soft, dull yarn in the fabrics at Daaram made me think of design ideas for shapely but still flowy styles. I’ve ordered some khadi yardage for those styles and hopefully those ideas in my head will evolve into something tangible for my Winter Collection.

Below, some pictures of the Brass Tacks corner at Daaram:

Hyderabad, Show Me Love

For the last 8 months I’ve been working on a project that I am really excited about. It all began around a year ago when I met with the owners of Daaram, a store in Hyderabad, and they expressed an interest in retailing my brand there. Daaram is run by Dastkar Andhra, a non-profit dedicated to promoting handloom fabric, and because of our common passion we immediately got along. Latha, one of the partners at Daaram, seemed really keen on working with me because she felt that I could give her team of designers ideas on what kinds of handloom fabrics would work well for contemporary silhouettes; in the long run that kind of input will help handloom weavers compete with powerloom and mill made fabric suppliers.

In the last 6 months, while working on my Summer and upcoming Monsoon collections, the design team at Dastkar Andhra has been really patient with changing colours, fabric construction and weaves to suit my tastes. I often place orders asking, “Can you make yardage with fabric construction from A, the colours from B but change the green lines to the blue shade from fabric C”. Luckily for me, they oblige me whenever they can (there are rare exceptions like when the weavers of Muramunda refuse to weave in anything but Kora).

So this Thursday, on July 9th, Brass Tacks will launch in Hyderabad at Daaram. I’m nervous about the response, excited to reach out to more people, but mostly thrilled to have this opportunity so early in my business.