For most Indians, asking our American uncles to bring us stuff during their annual trips home ended about 20 years ago.
Not for Norah.
“I order my clothes mostly from the US. None of the Indian brands have my size. And if they do, they are often not stylish enough,” the professor from Delhi University says. (Norah is not her real name, which should tell you something.)
Norah isn’t alone in feeling left out.
According to the National Family Health Survey (NFHS) survey report of 2015-16, 21% of Indian women and 19% of Indian men fall under the overweight/obese spectrum of body mass index, up from 13% and 9%, respectively, since 2005-06. For India’s fashion industry, sized at USD50 billion as per data from Red Seer Consulting, it’s a chance to step up. Some 6%-8% of the industry’s total revenue, or USD3 billion-USD4 billion, comes from plus-size fashion. That number is expected to grow at a CAGR of 15%-18% over the next four years.
And yet, a quick look at the catalogue of the leading apparel brands and retailers in the country will show you that they can hardly see beyond the skinny customer.
The global fashion industry, which made size zero famous and Photoshop tools as crucial as threads and needles, has grown more accepting of different body types. But in India, fashion for folks of a bigger build has remained the industry’s orphan child.
One of the reasons for the apathy could simply be that this isn’t a business for everyone. You need a certain degree of empathy to relate to the yearnings of a population forced to live with shapeless wardrobes. There’s scientific evidencethat in India, certain communities exemplify this struggle more than others, being at a heightened risk of obesity.
Luckily, the one community this research mentions is also best known to turn adversity into big business.
So perhaps it’s little surprise that it would take a Marwari business house to seize the burgeoning opportunity in plus-size fashion.
The story of ALL
In a market where no other large, organised player has shown sustained commitment, Future Group’s ALL remains the outlier.
“ALL came into existence in 2005,” long before body-positive was even a concept here, says Hetal Kotak, business head of Future Group’s plus-size label. “(Future Group founder) Kishore Biyani’s sharp and rooted consumer insight led to the birth of this brand. [He had] a sharp understanding of what [this population] wants, and that maybe not too many [businesses] are carefully listening to it.”
“At the end of the day, we Indians do have curvier body types,” Kotak says. “It is not about being healthy or otherwise — just that our body shapes are different. With ALL, the basic idea is democratisation of fashion. Fashion for everyone.”
Today, ALL has 71 exclusive brand outlets across the country, in addition to shop in shops. It also reaches 12,000 pin codes via its online platform. Its revenue has been consistently growing at 37% CAGR over the last three years. In 2017, sales grew 70% year on year (y-o-y). Since 2016, ALL has been partnering Lakmé Fashion Week, India’s premier fashion event. The collaboration in 2017 had fashion designer Wendell Rodricks designing clothes for the plus-size category. For the 2018 event, which started in Mumbai on August 22, it has roped in designer Narendra Kumar, who was also the first editor of Elle India, when it was launched in the country in 1996.
In an interview to The Hindu, Kumar says he wants to dispel long-held fashion wisdom: people with bigger frames shouldn’t wear bright colours or large prints. Clothes for plus-size buyers isn’t just about large sizes, Kumar says, adding that his focus is on designing comfortable garments with flattering fits.
It’s the kind of mainstream thinking the category needs more of to shed its “fringe” label.
The long journey from made-to-order to ready-to-wear
“The reason it took this long for the industry to pay attention to the category was the lack of demand,” says Raksha Shetty, founder of Xxllent, an e-commerce platform dedicated to plus-size fashion. “Tailors are relatively cheap in India. As a result, plus-size consumers, both men and women, would prefer stitched clothes over ready-to-wear.”
Chandni Soni, co-founder of Amydus, an omnichannel plus-size fashion retailer, seconds Shetty. “It’s not like plus-size clothing was not available in India. [But] it was generally [only] salwar kameez for women, and basic trousers and shirts for men,” she says. “And since the unorganised market for readymade apparel is so huge in the country, combined with the availability of tailors and the mindset that fashion is only for thin consumers, plus-size people never bothered with demanding fashionable clothes.”
To be sure, the industry has struggled with its own constraints.
The primary reason is the lack of design know-how: The minute a particular size is considered plus size, the availability of options in terms of colours, silhouettes, and fits drastically reduces. ET Prime visited leading apparel retailers to find out how they define plus size. While many retailers consider a women’s garment plus-size if the waist size is above 40 inches, for some the cut-off is 37 inches. Similar discrepancy is visible in men’s clothing too.
Then there’s the need for extra material, which pushes up manufacturing costs. Depending on size and design, the cost of manufacturing plus-size clothes could be anything between 5% and 20% higher compared with normal-size clothing. Added to this, lack of reliable demand and consumption data, given the nascent state of the organised market, makes retailers shy away from this category.
Busting myths
Ankur Bisen, senior vice-president of retail consultancy Technopak Advisors, says fashion is like a bell curve, where almost 55% of the consumers lie in the middle, normal body-type range. The remaining are on the either side of the curve, and perhaps 20% are in the plus-size range. Fashion designer Little Shilpa during a fittings session with a plus-size model for the Lakmé Fashion Week in Mumbai; Arijit Sen/Hindustan Times vis Getty Images“The potential for this market has always existed, it’s just that with the rising body inclusivity in fashion, plus-size consumers are more vocal about their demands, which is obviously being heard by the retailers,” Bisen says.
Indeed, entrepreneurial interest is increasing in this category, even though returns are still tiny. Shivank Aggarwal, marketing manager at Pluss Clothing, says plus-size fashion started to see serious momentum four to five years ago. “Yes, the category and our company have been around for a decade. However, with the rising trend of body positivity and inclusivity in fashion, it is finally seeing the kind of interest it deserves.”
Last Inch, an online plus-size retailer did business worth INR53 lakh in FY18, growing 37% y-o-y. Other privately held companies ET Prime spoke with say they have been growing sales at an average 30%-45% y-o-y.
“We have clothes ranging all the way up to 48 inches-52 inches for both women and men,” says Soni of Amydus. “One of our fastest-moving clothing pieces for women is shorts. We genuinely thought shorts will not be a fast-moving unit, considering we have generally seen women shying away from it. But we were wrong.”
For all these companies, Future Group remains the lodestar.
This year, the ALL-Lakmé Fashion Week combine auditioned 300 new faces for the plus- size walk. Twenty-nine of them were shortlisted to walk the ramp for Kumar’s Winter/Festive Collection.
“There was a large set of people who could afford designer wear but were intimidated by it,” says Jaspreet Chandok, vice president and head of fashion at IMG Reliance, which organises the Lakmé Fashion Week. “Fifteen years ago, a plus-size person would have thought twice before entering a designer showroom. We feel that with the help of these fashion shows, we are supporting body positivity and inclusivity.”
Of course, good karma comes with dividends. “Needless to say, we are also increasing the consumer base for designer wear in general,” Chandok says.
(Graphic by Ankita Mehrotra)
(Clarification: An earlier version of this story erroneously identified Norah as a Bengaluru-based writer. This has been corrected.)
Not for Norah.
“I order my clothes mostly from the US. None of the Indian brands have my size. And if they do, they are often not stylish enough,” the professor from Delhi University says. (Norah is not her real name, which should tell you something.)
Norah isn’t alone in feeling left out.
According to the National Family Health Survey (NFHS) survey report of 2015-16, 21% of Indian women and 19% of Indian men fall under the overweight/obese spectrum of body mass index, up from 13% and 9%, respectively, since 2005-06. For India’s fashion industry, sized at USD50 billion as per data from Red Seer Consulting, it’s a chance to step up. Some 6%-8% of the industry’s total revenue, or USD3 billion-USD4 billion, comes from plus-size fashion. That number is expected to grow at a CAGR of 15%-18% over the next four years.
And yet, a quick look at the catalogue of the leading apparel brands and retailers in the country will show you that they can hardly see beyond the skinny customer.
The global fashion industry, which made size zero famous and Photoshop tools as crucial as threads and needles, has grown more accepting of different body types. But in India, fashion for folks of a bigger build has remained the industry’s orphan child.
One of the reasons for the apathy could simply be that this isn’t a business for everyone. You need a certain degree of empathy to relate to the yearnings of a population forced to live with shapeless wardrobes. There’s scientific evidencethat in India, certain communities exemplify this struggle more than others, being at a heightened risk of obesity.
Luckily, the one community this research mentions is also best known to turn adversity into big business.
So perhaps it’s little surprise that it would take a Marwari business house to seize the burgeoning opportunity in plus-size fashion.
The story of ALL
In a market where no other large, organised player has shown sustained commitment, Future Group’s ALL remains the outlier.
“ALL came into existence in 2005,” long before body-positive was even a concept here, says Hetal Kotak, business head of Future Group’s plus-size label. “(Future Group founder) Kishore Biyani’s sharp and rooted consumer insight led to the birth of this brand. [He had] a sharp understanding of what [this population] wants, and that maybe not too many [businesses] are carefully listening to it.”
“At the end of the day, we Indians do have curvier body types,” Kotak says. “It is not about being healthy or otherwise — just that our body shapes are different. With ALL, the basic idea is democratisation of fashion. Fashion for everyone.”
Today, ALL has 71 exclusive brand outlets across the country, in addition to shop in shops. It also reaches 12,000 pin codes via its online platform. Its revenue has been consistently growing at 37% CAGR over the last three years. In 2017, sales grew 70% year on year (y-o-y). Since 2016, ALL has been partnering Lakmé Fashion Week, India’s premier fashion event. The collaboration in 2017 had fashion designer Wendell Rodricks designing clothes for the plus-size category. For the 2018 event, which started in Mumbai on August 22, it has roped in designer Narendra Kumar, who was also the first editor of Elle India, when it was launched in the country in 1996.
In an interview to The Hindu, Kumar says he wants to dispel long-held fashion wisdom: people with bigger frames shouldn’t wear bright colours or large prints. Clothes for plus-size buyers isn’t just about large sizes, Kumar says, adding that his focus is on designing comfortable garments with flattering fits.
It’s the kind of mainstream thinking the category needs more of to shed its “fringe” label.
The long journey from made-to-order to ready-to-wear
“The reason it took this long for the industry to pay attention to the category was the lack of demand,” says Raksha Shetty, founder of Xxllent, an e-commerce platform dedicated to plus-size fashion. “Tailors are relatively cheap in India. As a result, plus-size consumers, both men and women, would prefer stitched clothes over ready-to-wear.”
Chandni Soni, co-founder of Amydus, an omnichannel plus-size fashion retailer, seconds Shetty. “It’s not like plus-size clothing was not available in India. [But] it was generally [only] salwar kameez for women, and basic trousers and shirts for men,” she says. “And since the unorganised market for readymade apparel is so huge in the country, combined with the availability of tailors and the mindset that fashion is only for thin consumers, plus-size people never bothered with demanding fashionable clothes.”
To be sure, the industry has struggled with its own constraints.
The primary reason is the lack of design know-how: The minute a particular size is considered plus size, the availability of options in terms of colours, silhouettes, and fits drastically reduces. ET Prime visited leading apparel retailers to find out how they define plus size. While many retailers consider a women’s garment plus-size if the waist size is above 40 inches, for some the cut-off is 37 inches. Similar discrepancy is visible in men’s clothing too.
Then there’s the need for extra material, which pushes up manufacturing costs. Depending on size and design, the cost of manufacturing plus-size clothes could be anything between 5% and 20% higher compared with normal-size clothing. Added to this, lack of reliable demand and consumption data, given the nascent state of the organised market, makes retailers shy away from this category.
Busting myths
Ankur Bisen, senior vice-president of retail consultancy Technopak Advisors, says fashion is like a bell curve, where almost 55% of the consumers lie in the middle, normal body-type range. The remaining are on the either side of the curve, and perhaps 20% are in the plus-size range. Fashion designer Little Shilpa during a fittings session with a plus-size model for the Lakmé Fashion Week in Mumbai; Arijit Sen/Hindustan Times vis Getty Images“The potential for this market has always existed, it’s just that with the rising body inclusivity in fashion, plus-size consumers are more vocal about their demands, which is obviously being heard by the retailers,” Bisen says.
Indeed, entrepreneurial interest is increasing in this category, even though returns are still tiny. Shivank Aggarwal, marketing manager at Pluss Clothing, says plus-size fashion started to see serious momentum four to five years ago. “Yes, the category and our company have been around for a decade. However, with the rising trend of body positivity and inclusivity in fashion, it is finally seeing the kind of interest it deserves.”
Last Inch, an online plus-size retailer did business worth INR53 lakh in FY18, growing 37% y-o-y. Other privately held companies ET Prime spoke with say they have been growing sales at an average 30%-45% y-o-y.
“We have clothes ranging all the way up to 48 inches-52 inches for both women and men,” says Soni of Amydus. “One of our fastest-moving clothing pieces for women is shorts. We genuinely thought shorts will not be a fast-moving unit, considering we have generally seen women shying away from it. But we were wrong.”
For all these companies, Future Group remains the lodestar.
This year, the ALL-Lakmé Fashion Week combine auditioned 300 new faces for the plus- size walk. Twenty-nine of them were shortlisted to walk the ramp for Kumar’s Winter/Festive Collection.
“There was a large set of people who could afford designer wear but were intimidated by it,” says Jaspreet Chandok, vice president and head of fashion at IMG Reliance, which organises the Lakmé Fashion Week. “Fifteen years ago, a plus-size person would have thought twice before entering a designer showroom. We feel that with the help of these fashion shows, we are supporting body positivity and inclusivity.”
Of course, good karma comes with dividends. “Needless to say, we are also increasing the consumer base for designer wear in general,” Chandok says.
(Graphic by Ankita Mehrotra)
(Clarification: An earlier version of this story erroneously identified Norah as a Bengaluru-based writer. This has been corrected.)
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