Brands/retailers and other top newsmakers of 2015

Year 2015, saw a lot of activity in India’s apparel and fashion business space. At Fashionunited.in, we tracked some of the buzz around the industry with the 'most read articles of 2015' that were a hit among our readers. The apparel and fashion industry saw many new players both global and Indian. While global brands like H&M, Hunkemoller, Gap opening debut stores in India at Delhi’s Select Citywalk, DLF Promenade and Ambience Mall, respectively, to long queues and much fanfare, existing global brands confirmed their optimism about India by opening new stores. Meanwhile, ecommerce continued to flourish as Amazon, Flipkart, Snapdeal emerged stronger. In fact, Amazon emerged stronger than most domestic eretailers, little wonder then news item ‘Amazon India hires Vikas Purohit as fashion category leader’ was one of the most read.

New/old brands/retailers continue to make news

Big, established Indian brands/retailers continued to make news through 2015. Sample this, ‘Arvind rebranding megamart stores…’ and ‘Arvind moving towards a fashion retail giant’ saw a major hits on our site. Similarly, ‘Birla Cellulose launching Liva, the New Age fluid fabric’ attracted a lot of readers. And news about the Union Budget 2015 ‘Budget 2015 scores with gst disappoints textile industry..’ saw numerous page hits.

Also making news were designers both old and new. For instance, TV’s mega producer Ekta Kapoor entering fashion arena, ‘Ekta Kapoor ventures into fashion segment with label ‘EK’ saw maximum page hits almost around 2,000 at fu.in. Similarly, news items: ‘Rhea and Sonam Kapoor partner with Shoppers Stop for Rheson’ and ‘Shraddha Kapoor unveils clothing line, Imara’ were among the top reads. Designers’ fraternity were not far behind. For example, ‘Gaurang Shah launches first flagship store in New Delhi’ and ‘Swapnil Shinde features among ‘Project Runway’ designers’ were among the top hits.

Then there were the trend and analytical articles that were among the top draw. Analytical write ups like ‘Men’s fashion becomes smart, gets ecommerce boost’, ‘Plus-size clothing brands see new business proposition’, ‘Lack of premium spaces force global brands to focus on select malls’ too drew a lot of readers. These and some global trend articles published the year round lured readers to Fashionunited.in through 2015. Also among the top reads were news about global luxury brands, new brand store openings and fashion shows.