FREECULTR partners with WWF to spread awareness on tiger conservation

Today's customers prefer expressing their personality through the products they buy, which changes on a daily basis and no doubt custom- printed products have captalised on this trend. Changing the face of customised merchandise industry in the country, FREECULTR has got a lot to say in a very little span of time. 

In a candid conversation with Sandeep Singh, CEO & Co-Founder, FREECULTR, Retailer Media got to know more about the industry trends and company's vision on future expansions. He also spoke about the recent collaboration with WWF on tiger conservation. 

 

Talk to us about this special edition tees to raise awareness on tiger conservation?

As a part of our collaboration with WWF that was launched on Global Tiger Day July 29, 2015), FREECULTR Express has introduced a special edition t-shirt for customers online. Of these special edition tees only 2226 are available for sale. This is the current number of tigers in India, as per the Tiger Census release in January 2015. Apart from these the online tee store -WWF- India will also feature customised designs on tees around the theme of wildlife and environment conservation.

 

How has been FREECULTR's journey so far? Talk to us about the initial challenges faced in terms of rooting this business into the market.

The digital platform which is a zero-investment platform has already enabled 20,000+ individual designers promoting 75,000+ designs through their personalized tee-stores invariably making it the largest collection of crowd sourced T-shirts to shop from. In a short span of time we have several organizations including NGOs on board who want to connect with their target audience and raise funds or spread awareness in a transparent manner on various initiatives. To name a few who are on board are The Beer Cafe, Naggaro, Naz Foundation, and Yash Raj Films with many more in pipeline. 

Just like many businesses we had a few challenges that startups love to have, rapidly growing demand that needed us to move way more fast than what we had anticipated to fill. Not only did this help us stay on our toes at all times but also gave everyone in the organisation a quick glimpse of the growth potential and excitement that lies ahead.

 

What is FREECULTR Express?

FREECULTR Express is a technology driven platform that provides anyone with visual content to open a tee store and start selling their designs on various styles of t-shirts. All designers have to do is register on the FREECULTR Website, create a tee store, upload their designs, tag their designs and start promoting their store link to generate sales. It's a zero inventory model wherein the t-shirts are produced on order. The moment a t-shirt is ordered by a customer, it is exclusively printed for the customer on his choice of tee and delivered to his/her doorstep. FREECULTR keeps a base cost of Rupees 450on the t-shirts and the remaining goes to the designers. The unique proposition of the platform is the amount of reach and visibility that it provides to the tee-store owners without any monetary investment by them. It can be anyone - an artist, a photographer, a doodle artist, a writer, a graphic designer, a community, an NGO or a brand, they just have to upload their visual content on their tee store and start selling. The idea is to democratize fashion and provide the largest repository of designs to the customers.

 

Put some light on the investment front of FREECULTR?

We have been a funded company from the start. FREECULTR has already raised $13 million in total from two rounds over the past 3 years. $4 million from Sequoia Capital as Series A in 2011 and subsequently $9million from Russian venture firm Ru-Net in July 2012 as Series B financing. We are looking to raise funds to grow our platform and expand our engineering & product team. 

 

What are your future expansion plans? Are you planning to sell your tees in a brick and mortar store? Justify the reason.

We are working towards providing a greater variety of merchandise, for the customer to choose from, to print the designs on. Greater the choice of merchandise, greater is the reach of the platform. The idea behind the business is new and is being overwhelmingly accepted by the youth. We are growing more than 60% month on month.  We are currently selling our men's lifestyle range through our brick and mortar stores across the country. We use these stores to actively promote FREECULTR Express tees as well. However, since Express is a model built around technology, our majority of promotions will essentially be digitally driven.

 

mCommerce these days is talk of the town. Are you planning to come up with a mobile app anytime soon? Why don't you have one till now?

FREECULTR Express is a 4 months old venture. Before we came up with our app, we wanted to do our research in order to provide our customer an app that can enable them to create designs on the go. Our platform is very unique and so is our experience. It's crucial to us that we keep the quality of engagement and experience consistent with that of website. We have taken up that challenge in stride and will be launching our app in a couple of months. 

 

Why don't you do the same in some other clothing categories?

We will be launching more variants for the merchandise soon. This will give the customers an option to choose their style and their choice of merchandise that they want their design to be printed. We are launching the kids' collection soon. We are also going to come up with options for winter. Going forward, we are going to provide the customers a whole lot of exciting options to choose from.

 

What are your expansion plans? How will you promote FREECULTR in tier II and III cities?

We are currently looking to expand in terms of our technological capabilities. We are investing in technology and supply chain solutions. We are looking to reduce the delivery times considerably to enhance customer experience. We want to build FREECULTR as the largest platform for customized merchandise in India. 

We are a technology driven platform and all our marketing efforts are also digitally carried. Our social media handles are very active and we have a lot of social following and engagement. The power of social media is immense and we are leveraging the potential to the maximum to reach out to the tier II and Tier III cities. Also, through our supply chain solutions, we ensure timely and effective deliveries to these cities. As the popularity grows, we will do more physical activations in these cities through various promotional activities. 

 

How do you manage the technology front at FREECULTR? Do you have a third-party tech solution provider?

We have our in-house tech team that takes care of the technology front. However, to augment their reach we have outsourced certain activities to third party as well. Going forward, along with our in-house tech team, we will surely reach out to third parties for various tech solutions.

 

It's not just about taking pictures and uploading it. To become an avid seller on your platform an adequate knowledge of photography, pixels, resolution etc. is required. So will it be true to say that FREECULTR is best suited for someone with this set of expertise?

FREECULTR EXPRESS is a platform that allows just about anyone to open their own tee-store. These designs can be in the form of photographs, sketches, paintings, digital illustrations or even smart phone photographs. Now anyone can become an entrepreneur and start earning from day one without the hassles of knowing the technology and mammoth sized operations that go behind making it happen. The knowledge of photography, pixels, resolution etc. definitely helps a lot. But for those who don't have an idea, we have a special section on the website called Express Masters. This page has a lot of tutorials and detailed steps on how to create and sell.  We also organize designer meets where both the newbies and the pros get to interact and share their experiences and their go-to tips on how they create their designs and promote their tee stores.