A thought-provoking “Why can’t we do something together?” and a comforting conversation that Pallavi Patodi had with her husband Darshan on his hospital bed after a surgery, led to a profitable online fashion store for ethnic apparels–yellowfashion.in — a premier online portal for Indian ethnic wear, especially sarees and lehengas.
This was a Mumbai-based start-up firm, started in 2011 by couple Darshan and Pallavi Patodi, which now gets 6 per cent of its sales revenue from exports, selling mostly designer sarees which is in much demand among the yellow fashion customers. Their other high-selling product, designer blouses, is also in much demand in the export markets. The company is striving to strengthening these categories in FY16-17.
Besides India and Sri Lanka, yellow fashion exports to the US, UAE, UK, Singapore and Australia. Sri Lanka is a market where yellow fashion is quite aggressive and more focussed, and intends to make it the next big retail market, after India.
One of the company’s co-founders Pallavi Patodi, who hails from the tiny town of Hatpiptiliya, tucked away in Dewas district of Madhya Pradesh, 50 km from Indore, had very limited exposure to the outside world. Her journey that had humble beginnings led her to becoming of the country’s most successful women entrepreneurs. With no colleges in her town for higher studies, she set out to pursue her Masters in Economics from Gujrati College (Devi Ahilya University, Indore). Years later, living a married life, with the responsibility of raising two children, did not stop her from chasing her dreams. She started learning the tricks of her trade, learned to capture the trends and moods to establish a creative line. But, gradually learning all this wasn’t taking her far and she was getting restless.
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The initial phase of her journey was no easy sailing, with barely 20-25 orders a month. Whatever little savings they had was finishing fast and the future was looking grim for the couple. It was during such times that they set off to change the strategy and took a hard decision to sell the stocks at less than the buying price, with zero profit, to gain a foothold in their business. And the decision certainly paid off. Neighbours started flocking their home; the ‘touch and feel” resulted in good sale giving Pallavi the much-needed confidence and optimism to move forward.
Pallavi now takes care of logistics, operations as well as selecting the products, maintaining the trends and fashion flow.
“I put myself in my customers’ shoes. If I don’t like a product, how can I expect them to like it,” she says.
Yellowfashion.in can now boast of hosting the wide, vibrant collections of some of the major fashion designers in India. The portal currently serves TIER I, II and III cities across India, with 37 per cent of ita business coming from south India alone. The company clocked a net revenue of Rs 8 crore in FY 14-15. With an increasing demand for their ethnic wear, yellowfashion.in is confident of touching Rs 15 crore in the fiscal 2015-2016.
Today, yellowfashion.in is a profitable e-commerce venture that runs in tune with Pallavi’s vision. Incorporating technology into its offering, Yellow Fashion is working on building a mobile app, and is also planning to set up pop-up stores across India to give its customers the ‘touch-and-feel’ experience, with the option of ordering online.
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