Cotstyle: Setting new standards for tees

They had ventured into the garment segment over a decade ago. In fact, GTN Industries, makers of Cotstyle -- which stands for cotton style – have been acclaimed for years for their tees and polos. As M K Patodia, Chairman and MD,

GTN Industries says, “Even Bill Clinton wears our T-shirts while playing golf. We gave it to him on his visit to India. Even at that time we were ahead of the market. While other players were selling a T-shirt for Rs 300, we were doing it for Rs 1,200. However, we felt the market had not matured enough. So even though many people liked our brand, we suspended operations. We waited for the market to mature so that we could sell volumes.”

The brand was reintroduced one and a half years ago. Of course, it went through some major changes in the last five years which included: increasing capacity from 50,000 to 2 lakh garments per month; putting up a fabric processing plant in Hyderabad for dyeing, printing and mercerizing; adding capacities for making fabric among others. “We have also put up a unit for making socks. So we have established backward integration to establish the brand,” he says. Cotstyle offers men’s T-shirts, polos and socks. Going forward its planning to launch women’s knitted tops and round neck T-shirts.

Primarily meant to be evening, party or golf wear, Cotstyle caters to the 30 to 75 year olds. The brand which claims to be different from others has a very high sale value. “While others offer socks at Rs 150 our range starts from Rs 200 or Rs 400. Our T-shirts start from Rs 1,200 and go up to Rs 2,500,” he says. The soon to be launched women’s knitted tops and T-shirts will be priced at nothing less than Rs 1,000 depending on the size of the fabric and can go up to Rs 1800 or so.

But the aim is not to deviate from its core specialty of T-shirts and socks. Instead it believes in developing specialty in mercerized T-shirts and being positioned with international standards. “Over the next two to three years, the brand hopes to grow in T-shirts by 70 per cent and in socks by 50 per cent,” he says.

Cotstyle has 20 distributors all over India with a presence in every state capital. It is distributed to around 300 stores including large formats. Their socks are available in large formats like Shoppers Stop, Reliance Footprint, Central etc. “There will be a definite growth of around 25 to 30 per cent in our MBO route by March. We are also in talks with large format retail chains like Lifestyle, Brand Fashion etc, which will be added to our network.” Patodia is clear that Cotstyle which started off as a knitwear brand will remain just that in the near future. “We are pitching to be Rs 30 crores by March 2013. We might look at exporting to neighboring countries,” concludes Patodia.