T-shirt is the staple of merchandise

India’s t-shirt market is expected to reach Rs 21,250 crore by 2018, growing at a significant rate of 12 per cent every year from Rs 12,200 crore in 2014. The demand for this casual wear has witnessed tremendous rise owing to the changing dynamics of apparel market, domination of youngsters in the workforce across industries, organisations opening up to casual dressing at work.

Once restricted to youth, t-shirts have been in demand by the elderly people as well, states Sandeep Singh, co-founder and CEO, FREECULTR Express. Speaking of the portal as tech enabled platform which enables creative folks to come and create their own store, Singh shares the enormous opportunities lying in the virtual space, which even made giants such as YRF and Disney tie up with FREECULTR Express.

Excerpts:

What is the ideal behind FREECULTR Express?

FREECULTR Express is a tech enabled platform which enables creative folks to come and create their own store. So we have people who have ideas and design capabilities. They can come online on our platform and create their own store.

When I say ‘Create your own store’, they can actually get a name that they can call their store as; they get url. They can simply upload their designs that go on to a t-shirt. They then set their own MRP and publish it, which is then up for purchase. Anyone as a designer can actually start selling their designs on t-shirts and subsequently on more merchandise like we have recently launched kids range as well. So the same deign can go on t-shirts for men, women and kids.

The beauty of FREECULTR is that the designers don’t need to invest in starting his own store. When we receive the order, we pay royalty to the designer and the orders are produced on demand and delivered. Once the delivery happens, we pay a credit to designers on monthly basis. So, it’s a great platform for designers to be on board.

We have seen a varied mix right from designers to even people who are passionate about designs and not into core profession, but into varied fields. We are offering them an opportunity to showcase and monetize their designs.

While many other portals are doing similar thing, what different do you offer?

We are more like a marketplace and we call ourselves as three party model – designer, production partner and consumer. So we act as tech platform, while other platforms are either focused purely on licensed merchandise, we are a mix of independent designers coming and creating, and power brands like Disney, YRF, The Beer Cafe, thereby acting as a great platform for brands who want to enter merchandising. Also, we have unique partnership with production vendors.

Next is that we are a tech platform rather than just the apparel store. Moreover we act as a gateway for designer to sell their merchandise on other platform like Flipkart, Myntra, Amazon where we sell under FREECULTR brands.

Do you follow a different strategy while dealing with marketplaces vs. your own portal?

We sell all the approved, moderated, good-to-go products on our portal, while only selected pieces are available on other platforms. Every week we look for designs that fall into certain criteria and based on that, the designs are curated for other marketplaces.

What are the criteria of selling merchandise on other market places?

Mix of few things like hysterics in data, conversion rate, category planning etc. and based on that we select our catalogue.

The brand has been a licensee for many properties. According to you, what gives you an edge upon other licensees operating within similar space?

I think these partners bring a lot of exclusive content on board and since the platform is a virtual one, you don’t produce before you sell, so in a way, lot of experiment can be done with more designs which give lot of selection to the customer.

For instance, we celebrated Mickey’s birthday in Indian and we went live with 40 designs. Since all the designs are virtual, it doesn’t cost us or Disney to go live with designs and it gives customers a great choice and partners like Yash Raj or Disney, an opportunity to experiment with more numbers of designs and takes out the risk of doing merchandise business, because if you get the designs produced and designs do not move due to lack of demand, you end up with stuck up inventory.

This is a great model for testing content and exclusive partnerships as well.

How do you zero upon the price points?

Licensed merchandise has been at higher end than other products because of the content and we are working on the price architecture of the licensed merchandise which we will be launching.

What all brands are in pipeline?

Within Disney, we will be launching Star Wars and Marvel Avengers, Spiderman along with Pixlr. We already have YRF, CRY (NGO) and many more are to be added. We are aiming to bring in more content for sure, details of which can’t be divulged at the moment.

Do you have any priority for the kind of content on FreeCultr?

Any content that has some kind of customer demand interests us. Moreover the content is a virtual platform with virtual designs so we are planning to bring very interesting content on board which can be as varied as book covers. So any content with customer demand will be catered by us. But characters and content from entertainment vertical is surely more in demand. 

Are you seeking any licensing based alliances for kids range?

We have just launched the kids range and are in talks with a few partners. But priority is to stabilize the range and later get into partnership. Disney’s content is going on kids t-shirts for sure. Chhota Bheem is on our radar, but we have not spoken to them yet.

T-shirt market is getting all attention. How do you analyse this and what can be the probable reasons?

T-shirt a staple product in any market and from consumers perspective India is comparatively younger market, so lot of young consumers are entering with good purchasing power. That is driving the demand. Moreover the access to buy T-shirts online and reach extended to small town is further creating the demand for staples.

T-shirts are the first purchase for almost everybody, be it a multi brand outlet or eCommerce platform.  Size are standardized, content is low, selection is huge, so it is easier for consumer to start with t-shirts verses any other category like bottom wear (which is difficult to sell online). Moreover, T-shirt is the fastest growing category in entire apparel segment, casual segment is growing anyway.

What change do you see in consumer behaviour?

 One thing for sure that the consumer is willing to experiment! We have some designs on our platform that we ourselves would never ever imagine to sell, but we have consumers buying full image of tiger.

·         Consumer is willing to experiment if the design is not

·         They are not just picking up a message t-shirt

·         They even prefer a photography tee or full print tee.

Graphic tee has always been the mainstay of 18 to 25 year old. Beyond that as you see more and more middle aged (25-40) customers, credits to work culture becoming more casual and people wearing t-shirts to their offices. These factors are also propelling higher age group to have their hands on t-shirts.