It all started almost three decades ago when Bela Katrak, Founder of Colorlines Clothing, found it difficult to get good cotton clothes for her children as per her requirements. At that very moment, she decided to start her own small manufacturing in kidswear business. Her products were well appreciated in the domestic market and industry stalwart Francis Wacziarg motivated her to enter into export. This is how the base of Colorlines Clothing, Bangalore, a respected name in kidswear export, began. The journey started with 30 machines and with its first order from Target, Australia, Colorlines has successfully completed 21 years. Apparel Online discussed various aspects of the company with Ayesha Katrak and Adil Katrak, both EDs of the company, who are carrying forward the legacy of their mother. Professionally well-managed, this company has aggressive future plans to expand and has recently increased its focus on worker welfare.
The thing, which really gives a sense of pride to the Katrak family apart from other achievements of Colorlines Clothing which is at present producing 60 lakh pieces per annum, is the niche created by this company in Bangalore as this city is popular for bottoms and shirts. Colorlines Clothing is perhaps the only company doing purely kidswear here. “We are offering products similar to the ones sold in Delhi but with a variety of embellishment,” says Ayesha who joined the business a decade ago. “The benefit is that we can offer a compliance set-up which is far better than many other companies (especially those in North India). And when it comes to kidswear, buyers are really concerned about its safety. Therefore, it gives an edge to produce kidswear in Bangalore.
Properly distributed client base across the globe is the company’s strength like in US, it is working with The Children Place, in Europe with Orchestra, C&A… and in UK, the company has clients like Mother Care, Tesco, George and many more. These brands have a very long-term relation with the company as it doesn’t like to switch buyers frequently. “We generally work with ‘A’ level international buyers who tend to have MOQs of 3,000 pieces but in exceptional cases, we take orders of 300 pieces also (like special designer collection or boutique collection that goes with a larger volume),” shared Ayesha.
Being a PD person, she shared her strength, “Buyers do have a lot of competition in terms of shopping, but there are several copyright issues. We specialize in giving new version of prints, silhouettes that are closer to what the buyers are looking for.” So the buyers get their designs outsourced along with the production. Colorlines’ PD team consists of 10 staff members at the senior level. This shows the company’s exclusive emphasis on creating latest products as per the changing trends without repeating the old designs again and again. The company, therefore, shares very strong relations with its customers and delivers their goods in maximum 40 days’ time. “This is possible when both we and the buyers have better understanding of each other and it comes with long-term relations. Only then do they approve our design or sample without any changes (from fabric to accessory), and we take maximum seven days in case of fitting dedicating the rest of the period to production and logistics,” adds Ayesha with a planned vision.
Currently producing 6 million pieces per year (depending on style/SMV) and hoping to double it in the next 18 to 24 months, Adil briefed: “We are not just looking to set up a regular factory, but also something which will actually improve the skills of our tailors like a training centre and a sustainable factory. Many more facilities will also be provided to the workers to support their families and children. Approximately, we will invest close to Rs. 24 crore to achieve these goals.” The company decided to also expand outside Karnataka as the policies of Odisha and Andhra Pradesh seem to be more fruitful compared to Karnataka.
95 per cent of the workforce in their factory are women and the company is very active on workers’ welfare front. Apart from routine health check-up camps, it has comfortable loan systems for its workers, helping them in education of their children. “As our industry is very time bound and stressful, we all are running from pillar to post… We have therapists and psychologists coming regularly to meet the workers as well as the middle-level management. Another thing that we just implemented is the changing working hours of the factory (not corporate office). Now we are working five days a week including the production unit. Earlier we were working daily for 8 hours, but now we will work for 9 hours from Monday to Friday which makes us loose some hours of production. But we are hoping that our workforce will be more energetic after this decision is executed. Especially as most of our employees are women workers, they will get more time to spend at home,” informed a proud Adil.
Adil manages factories and for better management of these with a full-fledged professional approach, he has distributed senior staff to the factories as the CEO of the company doesn’t sit in the corporate office. Each of the factories of Colorlines has senior management present there. “We like to assign approval decisions to the senior management. All of us meet once a month and discuss the overall strategy. The benefit that we have in this trade being young is that we can learn from the experience of stalwarts of the industry. Our core team is very much experienced to run the company. We are roaming around and learning,” Adil concluded on a positive note.
Bharat Tex Special Report 2026 
