'I am expecting significant portion of H2 2019's sale to come back in season ahead of us'

Like every other industry, textile too had taken a hit during the lockdown. But with markets opening up, retail brands are trying their best to get the customers back. "Despite lockdown we continued to engage with our shoppers through lockdown stories based on human values  of compassion and care. This helped us create brand love, and as the markets are opening up now, we are seeing shoppers coming back to us," says Ganesh Kumar, COO – Lifestyle Business, Raymond Limited. While some brands are waiting for customers to walk in to the stores, some like Raymonds never let the customer forget them.
Kumar talks to e4M about the impact of the pandmeic on the textile and apparel industry, the new normal, festival season sales and more.

Excerpts

What has been the impact of Covid-19 pandemic on the textile and apparel industry in India?
COVID-19 has changed the way consumers look at various categories of product and services. With the nationwide lockdown that went on for months, consumers had clearly prioritized everything into essential and non-essential categories. Our whole industry of textile & apparel fell into the later and the impact of that was very tepid demand initially. Fashion as such is a very touch, feel, try category. This further diminished the consumer interaction with product due to concerns of pandemic and hence led to poor demand. Slowly, demand started picking up, led by casual wear, sports and leisure wear followed by other need-based occasions.
Overall, the retail side of the industry learnt very fast and ensured safe shopping environment and a host of convenience options for shoppers to drive demand. All these together, with the upcoming festival & marriage season, are sure to generate demand and connect us back to shopper wardrobes.

 
What is the strategy that Raymond has adopted to face this situation?
Raymond believes in building a relationship of lifetime with its shoppers, and hence we are guided by our vision of consumer engagement and delight to drive monetization, thus building a sustainable business. Hence, right at the beginning of the lockdown, we urged our shoppers to stay indoors which is a bold step for a company which is the single largest physical retail chain in the country. Despite lockdown, we continued to engage with our shoppers through lockdown stories based on human values  of compassion and care. This helped us to create brand love, and as the markets are opening up now, we are seeing shoppers coming back to us.
Our vision of being a brand with purpose and built on a strong human values made us stay course! At a product level, we have a renewed focus on more relevant casual categories right from product development upto retailing, ensuring our brands are purposed to offer them with choices which are in vogue and in line with current lifestyle.

What is Raymond's take on the 'Atmanirbhar Bharat' campaign?
Raymond is a proud Indian brand and in its 95 years of existence it has set many benchmarks of worldclass excellence. We strongly believe that Indian enterprises have all that it takes to reach the top in any field and all that is needed is an audacious vision, hard work and keen understanding of consumers and markets. Raymond has set up worldclass linen plant at Amaravati under the 'Make in India' initiative, which is a testimony to our belief of realizing our vision to be leader in all fibers and segments.

Tell us a little about adapting to the new normal. Are you taking digital all the more seriously now? What has been your strategy around digital?
What demonetization did to digital payments is what the current pandemic is doing to digital content & media consumption. We at Raymond are building a complete ecosystem which traverses across digital & physical world and creates engagement & monetization platform for our brands in a manner which is relevant to the new life and lifestyle of consumers. This encompasses streams of work around e-commerce, endless aisle, self-measurement, visualization, concierge etc.

What are your expectations from the festival and wedding season? What is the kind of sale (what per cent of last year) you are expecting?
I am very hopeful that the upcoming festival and wedding season is going to lift growth back on track for fashion and lifestyle business like ours. Next few months’ calendar are not only full of festivals but also marriages, including those that have been postponed due to lockdown, and hence is a perfect opportunity to win back shoppers. I am expecting a significant portion of last year second half’s sale to come back in the season ahead of us.

 
What are the innovations Raymond has made for a better and safe shopping experience?
In times of crisis, a responsible brand like Raymond has to repose confidence among its shoppers. We have very stringent SOPs across our retail formats for all our fashion brands. Each store has been screened to ensure all SOPs are followed without fail. Each staff member has been trained and certified to be compliant to the new COVID-19 working norms, be it sanitization, social distancing, assisting, appointments, and concierge. All shoppers are expected to wear mask inside our stores and basic check of temperature is done before they enter the store. Our endeavour is to provide our shoppers with a safe shopping experience. We have also introduced a concierge service to enable taking our shop to the customers place.

 
Tell us a little about your ad campaigns--what is the preferred media for Raymond at the moment? Is it digital, TV, OOH or print and radio or a mix of all of the above?
In past few months, we have focused on digital medium for our campaigns. During the period of complete lockdown, we were on with a campaign #BeTheComplete which focused on real life short stories on the contemporary issues like lockdown and how are people dealing with it and yet staying positive and happy. This is in the space our property and connected very well with our audience. The whole campaign ran on our social assets on Facebook and Instagram. Later we had Raymond Khadi 'The Wheels of Freedom Collection' campaign around our 74th Independence Day which was a digital-only campaign. We received very good response for this, along with launch of our new e-commerce site MyRaymond.com.
With the upcoming season, we have a few more campaigns planned which would have a broader media mix beyond digital. But having said that focus and importance of digital is here to stay even after the lockdown is completely lifted.