Fashion ingredient brand from the Aditya Birla Group, Liva has launched its AW 21-22 seasonal collection at the LAPF Studios.

Curated by Liva’s in-house design team following inputs from WGSN global trends, the collection is based on the constant thrive to adjust to new normal ways of living and an opportunity to adapt, innovate and reinvent.

Launched through a pan India webcast, the swatches of this collection were made available at the buyer-seller meet organised at all the three LAPF Studios.

Over 170 business visitors from 132 companies visited to witness the collection across all the LAPF Studios.

Attendees included key brands, buying houses, online retailers, and exporters. Renowned organisations like Pearl Global, Aman Exports, Cheer Sagar, Juniper Brand, Li & Fung, Asamar Apparels, Prits Leather, and Triburg were a part of the guest list.

Partners across textile hubs like Erode, Ahmedabad, Delhi-NCR, Mumbai, Nagpur showcased their collections.

Buyers have expressed interest specially for sustainable fabrics made with LivaReviva and Livaeco by Birla Cellulose. Brands also appreciated the block chain based C-O-C tool “GreenTrack” that enables brands to track journey of fibre from plantation till garment stage.

Women’s wear brand Saundh has teamed up with Freddy Birdy to create a multi-dimensional campaign for its spring/ summer 2021 collection. The collection ‘The Canvas of Life, reflects the Gujarati tradition of bhujodi, a heavy-weft Kutch weave featuring motifs including mangoes and Ari embroidery. For the campaign Birdy has created sanguine messages including, ‘Whatever you become, you will always miss who you were’ and, ‘without tradition there is no modern.’

Launched a little over a year ago, Saundh is owned by Surat-based parent company Sahiba. The brand retails a range of ethnic inspired women’s wear including kurtas and kaftans in bright prints and relaxed silhouettes. Originally from Mumbai, Birdy has lived and worked in New Delhi for the past two decades. He has received more ‘copywriter of the year" awards than any other copywriter in Indian advertising. He currently owns his own advertising agency which is based in New Delhi.

Birdy previously worked on social media campaigns for companies like Benetton and The Lodha Group but for the first time his words have been depicted visually for a campaign.

Brick and mortar retail has bounced back in India with sales reaching pre-COVID numbers few months ago. This was revealed at the recent Retail Leadership Summit 2021, organized by the Retailers Association of India, lingerie retailer Zivame and fashion watch brand Fossil.

Zivame with Reliance Brands as one of its owners, added about 24 new stores in the last four months and plans to double the number this year.

By the end of next year, brand aims to add 150 stores besides expanding through other formats as well. The ten-year-old company sells lingerie, beach wear, active wear and accessories for women.

Fossil, whose majority business comes from the offline stores, also banked on ecommerce to drive sales of its watches. The brand accelerated WhatsApp selling, video selling and home delivery of watches.

While ecommerce surged amid the pandemic, consumer-facing companies note it is omnichannel with seamless online and offline shopping experience that will be part and parcel of future retail.

Expansion of store network will be back on track in 2021 for the country's largest retail chains such as Reliance Retail, Lifestyle, Madura Fashion and Lifestyle, Arvind Fashions, Spencer's Retail, Nature's Basket and Puma.

These retail chains plan to open as many new stores in 2021 as per original plans after expansion took a hit in 2020 due to lockdown and had severe impact on sales.

Industry experts attribute store expansion drive in 2021 to business recovering faster than initially expected and COVID-19 vaccination drive.

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Victoria’s Secret, the premium lingerie and beauty retailer from L Brands plans to launch new stores in Indian malls.

US-based L Brands is expected to explore the franchise model for Victoria’s Secret. The brand is setting the pitch for India's expansion even as the pandemic has crippled its business globally. Last year, Victoria’s Secret permanently closed 241 stores in North America and has projected to shut another 30 to 50 stores in the region.

Stuart Burgdoerfer, Executive Vice-President and Chief Financial Officer, L Brands, says they are pursuing a dual-path approach to the separation of Victoria’s Secret.

India with its young working-class and rising disposable incomes is too lucrative a market for brands to overlook.

The local apparel market is expected to grow to a Rs 5,700-5,800-billion opportunity by 2024 despite the pandemic-led year-on-year 27 per cent decline in size in 2020.

RELATED ARTICLE Under Armour opens fourth store in 'Jio World Drive Mall, Mumbai'

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CREDITS: Boston Consulting Group (BCG) report.

Flipkart is preparing for an Initial Public Offering (IPO) by the end of this year, amid a rush of tech companies going public globally. The company rejigged its board of directors in December bringing in four new members, including CEO Kalyan Krishnamurthy, HDFC CEO Keki Mistry, Walmart’s global chief technology officer Suresh Kumar and Walmart’s executive vice president for international strategy and development Leigh Hopkins.

It recently appointed Hemant Badri, Former Vice President-Global operations, Unilever, as its new Senior Vice-President. Similarly, Amitesh Jha, Senior Vice President, Flipkart was appointed the new head of the CDO (category design operations) and M3 (Marketing, Merchandising & Monetization). In this role, he will oversee the consumables, softlines, and customer and marketing charters/

The other major change in leadership includes Ranjith Boyanapalli , Head- Fintech and Payments Group, who will now also lead Customer Experience, Marketplace and the Central Liquidation Team (CLT).

The company is looking at going public by the end of 2021 or in 2022 at a prospective valuation of $40 billion, and has begun talking to investment banks Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley, etc.

Aditya Birla Fashion and Retail’s (ABFRL) recent partnership with designer Tarun Tahiliani, and Tahiliani’s launch of a new men’s ethnic wear brand led to a 9 per cent rise in the company’s shares.

As per a Live Mint report, over the next five years, the new brand aims to build Rs500 crore business. ABFRL and will hold 80 per cent share in the new entity while Tahiliani will hold the remaining 20 per cent.

ABFRL will also acquire a 33 per cent stake in Tahiliani’s existing luxury couture business, with the option to increase it to 51 per cent in the next few years. These acquisitions indicate ABFRL’s growing emphasis on the ethnic wear segment. In January, the company acquired 51 per cent stake in the Sabyasachi brand. Earlier, it also made investments in Jaypore and Shantanu & Nikhil (S&N).

Meanwhile, despite appreciation in ABFRL’s shares last week, its stock is still about 34 per cent lower than the pre-COVID highs seen in February last year. Retailers have faced demand issues since the pandemic began and plan to monitor demand in the coming days.

Madura Fashion & Lifestyle’s brands such as Van Heusen and Allen Solly have closed its End-of-Season Sales (EOSS) and moved towards a seasons' calendar where it plans to offer fresh merchandize month-on-month. The company also plans to open 100 stores during the rest of this financial year (FY21) and continue expansion plans of around 300-400 stores over the next year. This expansion will be across the country, including smaller towns and larger metros.

With another wedding season on the anvil, the Madura Fashions expects strong business through the months of April-June. The company also expects demand to arise from back-to-office and back-to-campus categories.

Casual clothing will also continue to drive growth for the company thanks to the shift in casual wear over the past year due to the lockdown where people were confined to their homes, and working from home now becoming the new normal.

The Textile Ministry is taking a re-look at the proposed parameters of the Production Linked Incentive (PLI) scheme for the sector as some in the industry has complained that the minimum turnover suggested for qualifying for the scheme is too high and would exclude many.

As per the Hindu Business Line, the PLI scheme was launched for the textiles sector (man-made fibre segment and technical textiles) in November 2020 when the Union Cabinet cleared the proposal for ten sectors which also included pharmaceuticals, automobiles and auto components, telecom and networking products, advanced chemistry cell batteries, food products, solar modules, white goods, and speciality steel.

The textile sector has been allocated Rs 10,683 crore under the scheme which, as per proposed plans of the Ministry, will be offered for incremental production in 40 identified man-made fibre items and 10 technical textiles products. The idea behind the PLI scheme is to promote domestic manufacturing, for both sales within the country and exports, by providing financial incentives on incremental turnover for five years.

For brownfield companies (companies already in operation) the incentive rates are proposed to be fixed at 9 per cent of turnover in the first year for companies with a turnover of ₹100-500 crore (for 50 per cent incremental turnover) and 7 per cent for those above that. In the subsequent four years it would keep tapering.

For greenfield projects (new set-ups), a minimum investment of ₹500 crore has been proposed with incentives at 11 per cent to start with, the source said.

Recently, the Union Cabinet approved the detailed PLI schemes for the pharmaceuticals sector and IT hardware. To accommodate smaller players in the pharmaceuticals sector, a sub-category for MSME was created in the lowest threshold with a small portion of the total funds to be allocated to it.

KVIC plans to strengthen its online presence and achieve sales of over Rs 200 crore per year by focusing on e-marketing. The Commission generated revenues of over Rs 1 crore ($135,876) in less than a year of its launch.

KVIC launched its online store on July 7, 2020 and has till date delivered orders to over 10,000 customers. The e-portal had over 65,000 visitors during the first eight months. KVIC has also delivered more than 1 lakh articles/commodities to these customers.

The commission exempts all Khadi institutions and PMEGP units from financial and logistical burdens. All expenses incurred on operating Khadi e-portal are borne by KVIC. While in the case of other e-commerce sites, product cataloguing, packaging and dispatch are the responsibility of the respective sellers.

KVIC recently added new product categories on the e-commerce platform. Since the launch of its website, KVIC has received online orders from 31 states and Union Territories.