Mumbai: Fashion retailing in India is still in its infancy. But there is some good news for the fashion-conscious.

There is a growing awareness among retailers and marketers that fashion retailing need not mean just designer labels and prêt lines, but should be an honest attempt to interact with customers to find out their expectations and desires regarding fashion.

The recently held seminar on fashion retailing, hosted by Images Fashion Forum (IFF) in Mumbai, attended by high-profile retailers, marketers and fashion pundits among others, focused on changing consumer responses regarding fashion.

A number of prominent retailers and marketers said what could seem music to the ears of those desiring honest-to-goodness fashion clothing without the accompaniment of fancy designer labels and even fancier price labels.

For starters, it was widely felt that organised retailers had degenerated fashion retail into displaying large billboards and rolling out on-ground promotions to leverage their retail outlets as brands.

The speakers felt that it was high time Indian fashion retailers took a more serious view of fashion and came up with creative solutions while catering to customer needs to strengthen the presence in the evolving Indian marketplace.

An honest appraisal
Shopper's Stop CEO B S Nagesh felt that for customers fashion is a subjective proposition. ''Merchandisers and fashion retailers are the ones responsible for guiding and educating the consumer in making a choice in terms of buying fashionwear that helps them blend in well with peers and other social circles.''

Raymond executive director Anirudh Deshmukh said he felt that if fashion malls build themselves up as global brands then they should focus on investing in creative ways of getting the traffic to the store rather than merely rolling out promotional initiatives and consumer offers.

Giordano executive director Ishwar Chugani, also in the same vein, said the businesses operating in this segment should learn to think like customers for, only then would they be able to derive the appropriate insight. ''The way to do it is to get suggestions from the staff who directly deal with customers rather than chasing consultants to get a customer acquisition strategy. This is for the simple reason that the internal staff can provide the best of ideas on how to drive business at the retail outlet.''

Simone Tata, chairperson, Trent, the retail venture of the Tata group, also one of the attendees, said a huge amount of investment in technology, quality control and training is required for the industry to grow. ''Apart from this manufacturing has to keep pace with the industry to survive.''

On another level the discussion focused on product design. Arvind Singhal, chairman, KSA Technopark, global retail consultants, felt that fashion retailing has come a long way in India. ''Price, the determining factor that drove sales in the seventies and eighties, has now slipped to the third place. The two factors that figure high on a customer's mind before he makes a purchase decision are quality and contemporary design. This holds true for products as diverse as television sets, apparels, furniture and jewellery for some 30 million Indian consumers.''

He said the current demographic profile in India also favoured the domestic market to warm up to the retail and apparel fashion industry. ''India is one of the few countries with a large population in the 20-44 year age bracket group, which is sensitive to fashion trends. This profile does not exist even in a huge market such as China.''

Echoing same sentiments
Tata shared Singhal's viewpoint when she stressed that the Indian consumer today is more value-conscious rather than price-sensitive. ''And when it comes to consumer spends on fashionwear, the middleclass and upper-middleclass segments are willing to discriminate, differentiate and offer enhanced price for better value that the fashion brands can offer.''

One issue that was highlighted during the seminar was that marketers need to streamline their operations to improve efficiency. H Ramanathan, managing director, Landmark group, said: ''As an industry, we have not been able to streamline our processes for supply-chain management completely. A whole lot of interaction is required between brand managers and retailers for this. In recent times there has been a gradual improvement, and we may just be getting there.''

Projections made by Images state that as of now in India about Rs 40 billion is being invested in developing 182 malls, and another Rs 10 billion is being put in by brands and retailers in setting up or renovating 15 hypermarkets, 15 department stores, 750 large, medium and small supermarkets and 1,500 exclusive showrooms.

The panellists concluded that although the fashion industry had a long road ahead before it becomes big business, what is required in the short-term is to tap immediate opportunities and leverage on them through integrated marketing game plans so as to shore up the bottomlines for end-businesses.