After tasting success with its 'green' designer clothes range at last year's Lakme Fashion Week (LFW)— the country's premier fashion and trade event, 'Bhu:sattva', the organic textile division of Ahmedabad based organic foods manufacturing company Rising Tradelink Ltd (RTL) is now setting its eyes upon the global market. The company plans to start exporting its clothesline from September this year and has initiated talks with overseas players like Marks and Spencer and Louis Vuitton.
Bhu:sattva—the organic and natural clothing brand that was launched in March 2009 at the LFW, is all set to showcase its collection called 'Anekantavada' at the LFW Summer/Resort 2010 starting March 5 in Mumbai. "We have managed to make an impact in the last two LFWs that we participated in, that is manifest in the way our business has grown. While we bagged orders worth Rs 1.5 crore in LFW-March 2009, orders swelled up to Rs 6 crore in the September LFW," said Jainam Kumarpal, director of RTL that owns Bhu:sattva.
Currently, the company has non-resident Indian clientele who purchase Bhu:sattva clothes directly from RTL and market them at their multi-brand retail outlets in Germany, UK, US, Canada, Italy and other European countries. "We are currently not in to direct exports, but are now in talks with luxury goods makers like Louis Vuitton and Marks and Spencer to tap the global market", Kumarpal said.
He further said, "Our strategy is to first exhaust the niche market in India that comprises multi-brand designer outlets, then move on to direct exports and eventually come up with stand-alone Bhu:sattva brand stores." Currently, Bhu:sattva clothes are available across 50 stores in India spanning the major cities like Mumbai, Delhi, Ahmedabad, Kolkata, Pune,Hyderabad, Chennai among others.
RTL plans to tie up with 30 more such outlets this year. Kumarpal informed that there were around 120 designer multi-brand outlets in the country.
The privately held company plans to go for a listing in around three to five year's time to raise funds for its expansion.
Bhu:sattva now works with four to five non-governmental organisations(NGOs) that procure organic cotton from 50 to 100 villages in southern parts of India. The raw cotton to yarn to fabric processing is done organically without using strong chemicals at south India's power-looms. RTL colours the fabric using herbals dyes and stitches them in-house here in the Kutch and Bhuj region of Gujarat.