Designers have slashed the lead time from fashion shows to reaching customers
Designer Vijay Balhara displayed his fashion line at the Lakme Fashion Week (LFW) in March. The products have already reached stores. That’s a big change as the lead time from the ramp to shop racks was as much as six months earlier.
Balhara isn’t alone. For the first time, designs showcased in LFW are present in multi-branded retail stores in major metros within 45-50 days of the conclusion of the event. Customer orders (Balhara, for example, got bulk orders for almost 400 pieces from West Asia, Moscow, London, Mumbai and Ahmedabad immediately after LFW was over) and increasing pressure to deliver fashion lines to stores were enough to convince designers to pack off half their fashion wear to upmarket stores like Creo, Nautanki (in Ahmedabad), Fuel and Atosa.
Anjana Sharma, Senior Advisor, Fashion at IMG says, “We have built upon the concept of a formal ‘Resort’ platform – clothes that can be worn through the year as against for specific months – for the LFW designers. This way, consumers need not wait for six months to be able to wear the design they have seen in fashion weeks.”
Balhara agrees. “Consumers are the biggest beneficiaries as they will have access to collections they saw just a few weeks ago on the ramp,” he says.
Designer duo Shivan & Narresh share a similar story. “We received orders worth Rs 10 lakh from stores during LFW. Out of this, about half are already in stores,” they say. Since India is predominantly a summer resort country, ‘Resort’ collections can be sold in more than one season, add Shivan & Narresh. Designer Atithi Gupta, who claims to have done business worth lakhs within two months after LFW concluded, believes that Resort collections can stay on the selling floor at full price, nearly for eight months.
The retailers are eager to stock the latest designs. Falguni Zaveri, proprietor of fashion store Fuel, says the biggest benefit of delivering fashion week clothes within 45 days is that the clothes off the ramp are very fresh in the minds of the consumers. “If we have to wait for six months for delivery, we have to depend on fashion forecasts for the trends that are going to prevail at the time of delivery.”
Fashion stores like Atosa have seen an increase in queries and interests from buyers already. Aparna Badlani of Atosa says, “It is a bit hard to map the increase in walk-ins. But many designers are doing trunk shows in stores immediately after their fashion week shows and that is boosting the walk-ins and sales.”
Ahmedabad-based store Nautanky, owned by Nilesh Parashar has registered a 20 per cent increase in walk-ins already. “Both emerging and established designers like Abhishek Dutta, Pallavi Mohan, VJ Balhara, Rimmi Nayak, and Vaishali Sadangule put up good collections in LFW and have also reduced their delivery cycles to 45 days. This has a direct effect on the sales and more opportunity for designers to work on newer collections and constantly refill stock.”
