How Les Petits is Changing the Face of the Indian Kidswear Industry

Nowadays, kids have a tendency to copy or mimic adults around them, even while guarding zealously their own desires and with continuously changing fashion trends, they have a strong wish and requirement for designs worn by their playmates that they find attractive. Gone are the days when kids used to wear everything and anything that their parents used to choose for them. Now, it is the time for fashionable kids, and fashion begins with birth itself. The variety of kids' wear is as huge as that of adult wear; it is a vast segment, even in terms of accessories.

India is perhaps of the biggest contributors to the clothing retail sector worldwide and it is turning into a hub for kids' attire and fashion retailers too. The kid's apparel market caters to children between 0 to 14 years of age and has been segmented into boys-wear and girls-wear. The Indian boys-wear segment currently dominates the market share.

“The Indian Kids Wear Market was valued at $16.62 billion in FY2020 and is forecast to grow at CAGR of 5.89 percent through FY2026 to reach $22.53 billion by FY2026,” as per a report by Businesswire.

In this category, the unorganized sector practically rules the market, while the branded sector's inclination is more towards designs, which attract children.

And to cater to this aggressively growing demand of the luxury kids' apparel industry, Les Petits was founded by Swati Saraf in 2011. Les Petits brought international multi-brand offerings under a single roof. And since then, the brand has been offering premium fashion apparel, accessories, and furniture from leading international brands such as; Versace, Moschino, Dolce and Gabbana, Fendi, and many more. 

Elaborating on the ideologies of the brand, Swati Saraf, President Les Petits, shared, “Eventually, with time Les Petits came to be well received by the parents given to the rising brand consciousness among them. Where we started with a single store in Delhi DLF Emporio, and we gradually expanded our presence with two more stores in Palladium Mumbai and DLF Avenue Saket in Delhi. Along with this, in order to cater to the customers of PAN India we also enabled shopping through our website to enhance the shopping experience for parents and children, irrespective of their place of residence.”     

“With the help of Les Petits, we wanted to create an end-to-end ecosystem entailing luxury products for kids such as apparel, accessories, and furniture. Considering that when our brand was launched, the luxury kids' fashion market remained unexplored, we wanted to ease the process for parents where they could get diverse products from multiple international brands under one roof. We wanted to provide them with a seamless shopping experience for their kids that eliminate the hassles of tiring trips to different stores for fetching the right product for their kids,” she added. 

Retail Strategy 
Over the years the brand has been observing good traction from South and East. Looking at this positive trend in the future, Les Petits plans to come up with new stores in these locations.

“Considering that our brand focuses on luxury offerings, we strategically started by opening our stores in the metro cities of Delhi and Mumbai at premium locations of DLF Emporio and Palladium, respectively. It helped us directly reach out to our niche target audience, as the locations portrayed a good footfall for affluent consumers. We constantly evolve our retail strategy with the changing market scenario and ventured into an omnichannel model for expanding our offering to both online and offline consumers,” she said.

“Apart from this, since inception, we have aspired to venture into the jewelry industry for the promising trends and demand it portrays in the market. While expanding this segment in our kid's product line, we formed a collaboration with Rajasi Jindal, launching a limited edition of the exquisite Rajasi jewelry collection for kids that was exclusively made available at Les Petits. Along with this, we have also collaborated with Argentor Silver where they curate exclusive silver designs of characters patented by Les Petits,” she further added.

Marketing Strategy
Les Petits has a 360-degree approach to marketing and to connecting with its customers across various touch points - both online and offline. 

“Living in a digital age, we continually harness the benefits of digitization to the fullest to reach out to the maximum audience base. As the luxury kids’ apparel and accessories industries have developed over time and evolved to be the most lucrative market in India, we are quite active on our social media platforms to form a better engagement with our audience. Along with this, we regularly come up with informative content to keep the audience well aware-of the trends prevalent in the industry. Riding this digital wave, we have innovatively integrated digital marketing into our strategy for forming a better connection with the audience,” she asserted.

Tech Integration
The brand has been on a path of promising growth trajectory since its inception where it started with one store, eventually with good traction from the consumers owing to the rising consciousness amongst parents around branded products for their kids. Gradually with time, the brand was able to come up with two more stores and even venture into online offerings, looking at the growing interest of consumers in our branded products.

“We constantly strive to evolve with the changing technology and we have employed it to make our website user-friendly by increasing its speed and improving the customer experience. Over time, we even made changes to our website to support e-commerce through the platform. In the future, we also have plans to integrate AR and VR into our platform for offering an experiential user interface,” she concluded.