Sepia: Adding color to women’s lives

Sepia, the women’s wear brand is excited about making mark and getting a larger share of the market pie. The brand has been continuously wooing women with about 600 styles every season. As Rakesh Modi, CEO, Vivian Fashions,

makers of the brand Sepia says, “Our stores have 15 new styles every 15 days. We don’t believe in having too many pieces of a style, instead we make a lot of styles. This ensures our stores have a lot of fashion, risk is reduced, and women keep getting something new.” The six-season-old brand will be offering sweaters for this autumn/winter season. “These are fashion sweaters as our forte is fashion. We have done a lot of mix and match and will price these around Rs 1,600 to Rs 2,400. We have around 40 styles,” informs Modi.

Every year Sepia hopes for a minimum 100 per cent growth and this year it hopes for a 150 per cent growth over last year. Their target customers are women from 25 to 35 years. It also has another brand named Miss Sep for 15 to 25 year olds. Sepia’s product line is mainly tops which forms 60 per cent of its collection. Tunics and dresses form the rest. “We do a bit of denim, about five per cent. We will have two more categories in uppers in the next six months,” says Modi. Other winter products include: knitted T-shirts. These are heavy GSM full sleeve cotton T-shirts and have the look of a sweater. “This is also new for us and will come out this winter. The brand also plans to include accessories like bags, some artificial jewelry by autumn/winter. In spring/summer 2012 we will think of going global and enter countries like Malaysia, Mauritius and Singapore.”

With 350 point of sales that include EBOs, MBOs and large formats, the brand is targeting 600 point of sales by the end of March 2012. At present it has about 50 EBOs out of which 10 are franchisees. Most EBOs are in southern cities of Hyderabad and Bangalore. “We will soon have 10 stores in Bangalore. We aim to cover the west and north in the near future. By end of March 2012, we may target having 140 EBOs,” says Modi. Among large formats, it’s present in Shoppers Stop, Central, Reliance, among others. And with a presence in 300 MBOs Sepia is targeting 600 more by March-end. According to Modi EBOs give 25 per cent of the sales and MBOs 75 per cent. But by March 2012, both will have an equal share.