In 2018, Raisin was born as a contemporary wear brand for women that promised to never sacrifice comfort. What started as a bootstrapped brand from Surat has quickly transformed into one of the leading direct-to-consumer (D2C) fashion brands in India. With a strong foundation in Indian textiles and a modern outlook, Raisin has found success by prioritizing inclusivity, innovation, and customer satisfaction. Recently, Vikash Pacheriwal, the Director of Raisin, sat down for an interview to discuss the brand's journey and latest accomplishments.

          Vikash Pacheriwal, the Director of Raisin 

Brand & its Personality

Tell us in detail about your brand with its key achievements. How has your brand adopted to the new changing dynamics of the fashion industry and women’s western wear segment?

As a brand, Raisin started with an idea of being a contemporary wear brand for women without giving up on the experience of comfort. Starting as a completely bootstrapped brand, today we are one of the leading D2C fashion brands in Surat. 

Raisin is rooted in traditions of Indian textiles, but with a contemporary outlook and appeal. We have understood the aspirations of the Indian women and have imbibed it into our outfits.

Even though fashion industry is changing, but it is still not fashion forward. It lacks inclusivity. We decided to change these unprogressive social mores in the world of fashion with our #RaisinForAll campaign.

This laid foundation to showcase elderly women in our most elegant Aika collection and promote the notion of fashion without restrictions. The inclusive strategy bagged a lot of eyeballs from celebrities, especially Bhumi Pednekar, who is our brand ambassador.

Our constant innovations by blending the styles of East and West, while prioritizing inclusivity and comfort in women’s wear, has led to having more 24 lakh happy customers across tier- 2, and 3 cities across India. 

The positive feedback of our consumers and our vision for fashion got Raisin featured on Forbes India and bagged Garment Manufacturer of the Year Awards 2021.

Are you an aspirational brand for your consumer? Tell us in detail about your TG. How has your customers evolved?

We are an aspirational brand for our consumers. From weddings to brunch, it is our occasion wear that they want to own. Our target audience includes women from the age of 25-60 staying in tier 2, and 3 cities of India. The core value of Raisin has always been towards fashion blending with comfort. It is one of the fundamental ethics that most brands are missing today and something that women in our targeted regions want.

When we started, we wanted to focus on Western wear for young audiences. But, soon, we observed, how more Indian women are at the precipice of East and West, be in their fashion or life choices. With more working women present in tier 2 and 3 cities in the last few years, we realized how much purchasing power such demographics hold for our brand.

Hence, slowly, we started designing fusion wear, wedding outfits, Indian wear, etc for the working women residing in tier 2 and 3 cities.

This opened another window of opportunity for us as we got an insight about how the country lacks fashion forwardness. Personally, we have always believed that fashion is one of the biggest art that can change perception. With #RaisinForAll campaign, we decided to build a community that breaks stereotypical notions on conventional and age-appropriate dressing.

The campaign helped to expand and bring Raisin to a new group of audience ( elderly plus-sized women) who are often overlooked in the fashion industry. We wanted to change this as after all style and glamour is not age or size specific. This vision has positioned us as a leading comfortable, affordable, and inclusive fashion brand preferred by women of all age group, demographics, and sizes.

Tell us about your investments in terms of innovation for future business.

We are dedicated to invest towards innovations and grow our business. This year, we invested in introducing new fabrics to achieve this goal; we meticulously built a research and development department to study the viscose fabric. After testing its viability, we introduced it in our collection.

Technology is changing the very face of the Indian Fashion Industry. How has your brand evolved on this term? 

As a brand, we are constantly observing, testing, and prototyping the fashion trends consumed by the audience. We manufacture garments of high-quality fabrics all by ourselves, while providing our customers with the right product at the right price. For a more efficient process, we started incorporating the technology of digital prints into our latest collection, the Garden Of Eden. This was a booming trend recently and it made the collection more scalable through less labor-intensive production techniques of apparel design. By incorporating these trends into our collection, we keep up with consumer preference and provide unique fashion experiences.  

Product & its strength

Tell us about your product categories and bestsellers. What’s your average price points?

We have diverse products and SKUs across our two broad categories- Ethnic and Western Wear. Our Western Wear comprises of dresses of different lengths, blazer co-ords, crop tops, shirts.

Our Ethnic Wear comprises of salwar suits, kurtas, sarees, sharara sets. Every outfit is woven with care and comfort for the Indian climate. Depending on different collections, we have bestsellers such as our Co-ords, Kurta Sets, and Dresses. Our average price point in Ethnic and Western Wear is Rs 2500.

What are your future product expansion plans? Do you wish to expand more categories?

 We are looking to expand into the plus-size category and unisex fashion.

Collections, Style & Trends

What’s new with the brand collection for the upcoming season?

We have two new collections coming up - What's your move and Breezer.

Is your latest collection inspired by any theme? Please explain.

We definitely have a thematic expression in both the collections that represents nature, moods, and style of women. What’s your move collection has bold solid colour outfits and is inspired from the game of chess. It shows the unapologetic, unabashed, risk-taking women of today who choose their own moves in life and make it colourful. The Breezer collection represents an outdoorsy quaint vibe. It is quite a balmy collection.

Retail Mapping

Tell us about your key markets. Mention their names and define their retail spread.

We are currently available in cities like Ahmedabad, Mumbai, Delhi, Kolkata, Surat, Lucknow, Chandigarh, Rajkot, Ghaziabad, Meerut, Muzaffarnagar, Muradabad, Dehradun, Saharanpur, Bareily, Anand, Nadiad, Gurugram, Jalandhar, Ludhiana and Jammu.

Our majority sales come from the following states- Punjab, UP, Haryana, Delhi NCR, and cities - Varanasi, Delhi, Lucknow, Jammu, Ludhiana, Gurgaon, Faridabad. 

 How important are regional markets for your brand? Do you plan something differently in accordance with its taste?

With blending contemporary styles into Indian aesthetics in our categories of kurta and salwar suits sets, we have become one of the most preferred brands in tier 2 and tier 3 cities of India. Due to the aspirational, inclusive, and comfortable experience that our outfits present, a majority of our retail sales happen through these regional funnels. Hence, the regional markets are crucial to Raisin’s offline revenue generation.

To retain the consumption of the audience, we will be coming up with new collection as per the evolving trends and seasonal preference occurring in these markets. In addition to this, we meticulously take feedback of customers on new product designs and partner with factories to launch trendy outfits more efficiently in the regional markets.

How many retail points do you have currently with its share of business?

How well have you scored online? How has this changed the business for you?

We currently have a strong follower base online across all digital platforms. Our Instagram community consists of 89000 followers.

This business has surely changed our outlook towards the fashion industry. It has helped us to carve a niche between mass and premium fashion that represents all demographic age groups of women.

This strategy has worked well for us as we have over 24 lakh happy customers.

What are your future retail expansion plans?

We are investing heavily on digital growth and want to reach a larger audience through our SIS retail model. Our expansion strategies are designed to broaden the depth and width of the products without compromising on quality and affordability. With more than 75% increase in YOY growth, we are projecting a turnover of 100 crores in the next year.

Besides this, we also have plans to venture into the US and European markets with the target of having 100 plus Multi Brand Outlets along with global market.  We are planning to click 20 Exclusive Brand Outlets in the domestic market by March, 2024

Raisin is a brand that believes in a fashion-forward world that is inclusive, comfortable and affordable. It takes pride in their roots with the Indian textile industry while blending in contemporary western styles. The brand's dedication to constant innovation has been recognized through many awards and its customer base. Rasin has much more to achieve as they are going to expand globally with their unique blend of fashion to the world.