Vital statistics

Retail boom has spawned a mannequin manufacturing industry

In 1988, when Ravi Verma, proprietor of Delhi-based Clone Mannequins Inc, went to the city's big retail stores to dress up their shop windows with his hand-mould mannequins, he was turned away.

"Most retailers did not even look at my products and stamped them obscene," he recalls. Four years later when the economy opened up, the same retailers arrived at his doorstep in search of mannequins.

Thanks to India's booming retail sector, with shopping malls mushrooming from Yamuna Nagar to Kochi "" Verma's client list has expanded.

Today, he services 1,000 large retail customers such as Shopper's Stop, Pantaloon, Big Bazaar and Lifestyle and stocks 400 different styles, shades, shapes and sizes of mannequins.

In the last two years, nearly 30 new mannequin manufacturers have cropped up to service the retail sector.

However, the Rs 35-40 crore industry is still dominated by a half-a-dozen players, including Clone Mannequins in Delhi, Japan Mannequin Company in Bangalore and Mumbai's FY Trading.

"It's a virgin market and expected to grow into a Rs 250 crore industry in five years," says Ram Harpalani, partner in Japan Mannequin Company, which manufactures 50 pieces a day.

Clone's Verma claims that his company makes nearly 4,000 mannequins a year to feed the A and B grade stores besides making dress-form dummies for fashion designers and busts, hands and legs for lingerie, socks and watch displays.

From being carved out of plaster of Paris, the mannequins have moved to being hand-crafted with FRP (fibre glass products). Clearly, today they are all about fashion and attitude, with their demand being fuelled by the increasing number of brands.

Today customers like Wills Sports, W and Tommy Hilfiger order mannequins with their own specifications.

Pradeep Varshney, promoter of Delhi's KSI Dressform Company, who caters to Wills Sports, says that it's not just the exaggerated thin-look mannequins that are popular.

Many of his customers, including fashion designer Rohit Bal, order for big-hip models for their shop windows to match their customers' vital statistics. "There has been an increasing request for bigger waist and hips lately," observes Varshney.

In fact, thanks to the 39 per cent import duty on mannequins, the retail segment's demands are met by the domestic producers. Even a company like FY Trading, that started 10 years ago by importing mannequins from Taiwan and Korea, has it's own manufacturing units in Bangalore.

Today it is looking at exporting to South Africa and is already doing business with the US, the UK, Pakistan and Singapore. "Our orders come from the overseas sari shops," says Kantilal Doshi, partner in FY Trading.

Clone is also exporting to the US and Dubai and it has got the exclusive dealer of US-based Jiffy Steamer, manufacturer of hang- garment steam press "to meet retailers' needs" in India.

With the increasing demand, the business has been growing albeit in a haphazard fashion. Sweatshops have come up in smaller towns like Bareilly and Kanpur to meet the local demand.

But Doshi says quality of products from such shops is not up to the mark. TCNS Clothing's CEO, Vijay K Mishra agrees. He says that that while window-dressing is an integral part of apparel marketing, mannequin quality in India is poor.

"Sourcing from the west is expensive. And it's frustrating that the Indian manufacturers have not been able to fine tune their products to the correct look and feel. There is a need for innovation," he concludes.