Juelle: Banking on light winter wear to capture market

Women’s wear brand Juelle has come up with its new winter wear range, which is trendier, fashionable and in sync with global winter collections. The company is introducing light weight fabrics with special slub yarns in all categories including pre-winter. Talking about the fabrics, Guneet Singh & Japneet Singh, Directors, Juelle inform, “We are using nets, thick and thin injection slub yarns, more casual, light weight proper drapes in our garments.”

Trendy designs woo fashion forward women

Women’s wear is all about fashion and innovation having dynamic style and colourful variants while for men, functionality is the central theme. Looking at changing trends, Juelle has changed the designing and styling of sweaters to short length, long sleeves and round neck fashionable sweaters, which can be worn by younger age group too.

Elaborating on the impressive line-up, Singh, says, “We have introduced shrugs, capes, crop fits to our regular sweater line. With this line-up, we want to attract the millennials to our kitty. Being a fashionable brand, Juelle is into trendy blended yarn garments than formal pure wool sweater segment. We have not yet tried upon this segment yet.”

Sweaters with fine counts and light in weight have been quite popular in the recent past. Since heavy winters are observed for a less period, so to cope up with normal climatic conditions, light weight sweaters are much more in demand. The trend is here to stay because people are not ready to wear something heavy or bulky. Smart, light weight winter wear is more in demand. The price point for Juelle winter wear starts from Rs895/- to Rs1495/-.

Sweaters still a hot proposition

The shape of sweaters has changed but demand has not dipped. Newer varieties of yarn and trendy sweaters are still in demand. “We feel that a proper balance of distribution is needed in all categories including sweaters, sweat shirts and Jackets. They do overlap with each other to some extent but to retain the image of a complete women’s wear brand, the right mix of all categories is needed,” asserts Singh.

This is clearly a season of prints. There is a huge variety of prints from digital to sublimation to discharge prints. Printing on sweaters is gaining momentum. “We have introduced the concept of mix and match of fancy yarn with blended fashion fabrics, which is receiving a very good response from the customers,” Singh informs.

Heavy winter areas still prefer pure wool garments or heavier sweaters whereas in relatively plain areas where winters are less harsh or in areas where we are experiencing warmer seasons or in metros cities where fashion is more in demand, the demand for light weight and fashion sweaters is more. Certainly, metros are little saturated and non-metros are growing at a faster pace.

Highlighting the challenges faced by the industry, he says, “It is not the rise in price of raw material but the introduction of excise duty, which is making the end products costlier. The challenge is to keep updated as per new trends. Since regular conventional sweater segment is decreasing, we need to innovate newer fits, newer shapes and newer blends so that the sweaters remain in vogue.”

Multichannel retail strategy

The company is solely retailing through the MBO network. “We are not into LFS or EBOs at present but are looking for tie-ups. For us, the most promising channel is still the MBOs,” Singh explains. Going ahead, “We are planning to increase our MBO presence in Tier II & III cities and increase production capacity of pre-winter and light-weight materials to meet the growing demand,” adds Singh.

Online retail is working well despite being a new channel for India. It has achieved huge volumes and huge turnover in the last few years. “But still we feel that it is more of a discount-driven retail in which the net profitability to the manufacturer or the retailer is not visible or not present currently. Let the market mature, let discounts settle down then it will be a feasible form of retail. At present, it is more of an advertisement platform or discount format sale,” believes Singh.