Charagh Din: Making mark through single store

Charagh Din, a brand dealing in men’s shirt, launched in the year 1947 in Mumbai. Many years later, this brand is performing great with just one operational store and a series of dedicated customers. In a conversation with Retailer, Raju Desai, Promoter, Charagh Din shares his views on perception about the retail industry and his success story.

What is one thing that makes Charagh Din a class apart than other players in market?

In few words, it is Integrity and Honesty that acts as our USP. The customer spends a lot of money, so in my opinion, a customer should be benefitted from the price, which most of the people don’t believe in.

The mindset is that if we buy the material at low cost, we should get the benefit, forgetting the fact that it is the customer who has given capital to buy for lower price. At our store, the shirts are priced at Rs 300 to Rs 500 reduced price than rest of the market. The reason is very simple that we pass on every benefit we get to our consumers.

You have to have these beliefs to do such a thing. Everyone doesn’t believe so which is a sad part. This is one point that keeps us privileged.

Another thing that makes you unique is your expansion strategy. It has been many many years and you are confined to single store. Why so?

We are in the business from 1947. The reason why we are confined to single store is the range we offer. We are the only people in the world to receive 25 new designs per day. Why could we do it is because we have only one store. Also this has been a prominent reason behind our success in controlling quality. I believe when greed takes over, that is when you jump into multiple stores.

What are the latest market trends that you witness?

We do a new trend every single day which is not being followed by other people in same profession. The consumer’s ability to spend has gone up as there is more disposable income. There is no question about the spending capacity of consumer. The segment has become more fashion conscious, which makes a lot of differences. Brands like Zara and all, which are good brands, are being preferred by youngsters a lot. These brands may not satiate the need for quality but are high on fashion and youth finds a style sense in it.

There has been a shift in your bracket of target audiences. What factors were aided for this shift?

We have seen shift in terms that we have younger target audience today than we had say a decade ago. This shift came as we repositioned the brand. We made ourselves look younger which resulted in more college kids coming in today. From collection to marketing, everything played in important role in this process.

What marketing strategies were opted by you to widen the audience base?

You go online for a lot of things, where so many tools are available to market your brands. Online serves as an excellent medium and opens all doors to cater younger audiences.  We used lot of online advertising, took aid of A line magazines etc.

The sales of Charagh Din are driven more through online platform or offline store?

Sales is always an offline game for us. They future may change, but at the moment, online revenue is being overshadowed by that generated by the physical store. My sales data proves this.

What are your future plans and which channel is your priority – offline or online?

Future plans are to grow where we are. We focus on Omni-channel rather than focusing more on one part. Though the ration between online and brick & mortar store can’t be 50:50, offline is always at priority, particularly at this point of time.