How This Fashion e-Commerce Brand Turned Around Its Growth After Missing a Crucial Chance? From a probable loss of around Rs 30 lac, Kumars turned it around with this 'jugaad' in a fraction of that cost – roughly Rs 2-2.5 lac.

As a fashion e-commerce brand, if you have got your entire supply chain in-house, your timing for sourcing right prints and raw material from the market for what is and what would be in fashion the next season, got to be bang on. What happened when one such brand – Ellemora missed that? Even worse, this meant their final designs and styles were to be dumped.

NO WAY OUT

Last December, Shanky Kumar and Shubham Kumar – the brother duo and founders at Ellemora were late in sourcing the raw material. By the time they were in the market for sourcing, most of the trendy prints were already sourced by its competitors and other fashion e-commerce vendors. Hence, very few prints and that too in lesser quantity of those prints were left for them. Since the sampling was already done and final styles were ready, Kumars did not have many options. "We could either order new prints from manufacturers or wait out the season - both of which were unacceptable," says Shanky. This could have costed them Rs 25-30 lac including procurement, website development, human resource, and other overhead costs.

JUGAAD

The duo decided to reverse engineer the entire process. They redesigned the styles and altered them based on the left over prints and raw material available in the market, irrespective of its product category even as they took care of quality too. What they bought was the raw fabrics generally used for curtains, pillow covers, bed sheets and home décor items. "We took a risk and used these materials for adding a touch of design element to our collection," says Shubham. For example, the curtains and pillow covers material was used for patchwork, color-blocking and lace work etc. "These actually translated into cool designs and we went ahead with this fusion work in our Indo-Western category," adds Shubham.

TURNAROUND

And tada! When its Indo-Western collection - in which around 700 clothes were redesigned using fabrics of curtains, pillow covers, bed sheets etc., - was launched, there was an instant connect. "Most of the bloggers that associate with us gave the collection and the fusion good reviews. In fact, 60 per cent of our sales volume in the past one month comprised of Indo-Western garments," adds Shanky. But there is more to this. Ellemora's upcoming collection also has a lot of similar touch with patch works and color-blockings. From a probable loss of around Rs 30 lac, Kumars turned it around with this "jugaad' in a fraction of that cost – roughly INR 2-2.5 lac.

(This article was first published in the September 2017 issue of Entrepreneur Magazine. To subscribe, click here)