Indian brands are generating huge fan following: Siddharth Taparia, Vox Pop Clothing

Siddharth Taparia, Former Executive Director and Business Head-Licensing Business, The Walt Disney Company, talks about his online venture, voxpopclothing.com. Vox Pop Clothing is an apparel company that partners with iconic brands, designs, develops and sells the authentic licensed products online. Vox Pop received a seed funding of $400,000 from Blume Ventures and started its operations in July last year.

How did the name Vox Pop emanate?

Vox Pop in Latin means “Voices of people” and we strongly believe that every T-shirt represents the voice of every individual.

Tell us something about your venture.

Brands in India, be it brands in entertainment, sports or a consumer brand, were getting really strong in terms of their fan following. There were no category specialists to develop merchandise for the fans. There was a clear gap and my experience at Walt Disney helped me determine that the brands aren’t able to find the right partners. I decided to take on the mantle and started Vox Pop Clothing.

What all merchandise gets designed by Vox Pop and how’s been the response?

We are currently into T-shirts and plan to ramp up the product range with mobile accessories, laptop covers, boxers, sleepwear, flip-flops, bags, etc, and a single design could be used in multiple product forms.

Isn’t T-shirt too simple a product from the supply perspective?

There’s a large enough fan base to solve the problem for, and T-shirts command a very good margin. Although competitively priced, we believe we’re giving value to the customer. A good quality T-shirt of the brand that they admire at a price-point between 600-700 rupees is a value buy.

How difficult is to keep getting traffic on the website?

Primarily, it’s been a deal-driven ecosystem, which is not a sustainable and a prudent way to do business. Product differentiation is a big thing for us. The design and product available on our site will not be available anywhere else. That’s what we’ve always focused on and will continue to focus on in future. Good designs and great products! If you continue doing that in a prudent way, you can keep getting traction. And so far it has worked very well for us.

Interviewed by Nitin Abbey