Bombay Shirt Company growing through bespoke tailoring

While e-commerce platform Bombay Shirt Company was launched one and a half years ago, it has started taking up a lot of offline work. This includes a traveling tailor concept, where a tailoring expert is sent to a client’s house to take measurements,

show fabrics and so on. Today, it has a pop-up store that keeps going from one place to the other. The hybrid online-offline venture is targeting organic growth of 10 to 15 percent a year. Expansion through MBOs and spreading in the international markets is in their long term plans.

“Compared to other made to measure brands, our focus is more on design than on fits or measurement. Our interest is more on giving options in collars, buttons and fabric. We want to give a well-designed shirt, so we are tying up with a team of stylists based in Mumbai,” explains Akshay Narvekar, Director, Bombay Shirt Company.

Spreading made to measure concepts

The company gets orders from all over the world through its website. “In terms of our traveling kiosk, we are right now only in Mumbai. But we will look at other cities as well. We have orders from Delhi, Kolkata, Chennai and Bangalore, so our next step may be a big metro. I don’t think we will have a store as such since rentals are too high. At the most, we will have one flagship store, but we are in discussions with some MBOs,” explains Narvekar highlighting company’s retail strategy.

With initial investment from a bunch of angel investors, the company is not looking for funds in the immediate future. But as it scales up and expands, it would explore funding options. “Apart from gradually creating a brand-hold through social media and digital and offline marketing, we are looking at expansion into international markets. We already have distributors in a couple of countries. Now it’s a question of penetrating deeper into more countries,” Narvekar adds.

The company offers a premium and regular range. Each fabric is pre-designed and sizes available are small, medium and large but the option of getting customised measurements is also provided. Elaborates Narvekar, “We will soon provide a technology by which as you customize it you see things changing. So you can actually see the shirt as you visualise it and there’s very little left to the imagination.”

Building business with bespoke

Narvekar feels bespoke tailoring is picking up in India. “For ages, people have been buying fabrics and going to tailors. A large percentage of the market still does that. We are selling our shirts starting at Rs 1,700, which is obviously more than what you would pay for a tailored shirt. But we believe the fabric and workmanship we offer are much superior to what you get if you do it yourself. Now people are a lot more conscious of fits and they have creative ideas of how they want their shirt to look,” he says.

He points out that offering a good product is important. “Without a good product, there’s no use of having a great idea or a business model,” he says, adding, “In terms of the workmanship and actual making of the garment, the DNA involved in making a bespoke shirt versus a ready-to-wear standard size shirt is very different. You need to work with a production team that specializes in making bespoke shirts. More than the fabric, it matters who’s making the bespoke shirts.”