Trade Brains

Founded by Aarushi Kilawat, The Loom Art is a Jaipur based sustainable fashion brand that is catering to traditional wear across India, showcasing local talents through traditional craft forms. When were you founded & what is the product/service you provide? We were founded in 2017. We are a slow fashion sustainable brand that aims at creating a slow fashion lifestyle and promoting sustainable channels of working. We want to create a product line that sustains for a lifetime and holds a lot of emotional value. What is the company’s long and short-term vision? Where do you see your industry going in the next five years? We are driving all our forces together to create a global platform for ourselves. Our dream is to become a global brand promoting our own ideologies of fashion while being stocked at the best of fashion stores globally. Presently we are focusing on launching our new product range in our brand and focusing on launching our first-ever flagship store in the country. How did you get inspiration for the Company? How did you go about researching and validating the idea? While working as an assistant designer in the industry, I realized that there was a lack of transparency and authenticity in the kind of craft that we are promoting in our country back then. I've always believed that we're here to make an impression and add something worthwhile. I always wanted to narrate stories through my craft andmy work. That is something that has always stuck with me, as for a fact, I know, that stories lastfor a lifetime, and to do justice to my ideologies, I have always worked on crafts that have a story to tell andare self-narrative. The process of reaching an outcome has always influenced my design sensibilities. Is the company funded? If yes, how many rounds & how much funding, If No, then are you open to funding? No, we are not funded but we are open to funding. How does the product work & What problems does it solve? For me, the idea of sustainable fashion comes from a feeling where a piece of clothing lives a journey and can be transferredfrom one generation to another. I choose to work with fabrics that have a longer shelf life& are woven with every beat of emotions. We at The Loom Art are trying to bridge the gap between sustainable and aesthetical fashion clothing. We want to create a product that is authentic, can sustain for a longer period of time, and is also aesthetical at the same point in time. What are your USP and innovation? How are you different from others? The art in The Loom Art stands for the core hand embroideries that we do and our USP lies in the same. We mainly work with Kantha and Sujini, because my idea of design is that it's a mode of communication where you can narrate stories. These crafts have stories attached to them Kantha is a centuries-old traditional embroidery form that has evolved from the thrift of rural women in Bengal while the art of Sujini comes from Bihar and can be traced to soft, embroidered quilts made for newborns in the 18th century. We are different from others as we are trying to make voices heard and narrate a storyline that is self-explanatory and is also empowering hidden stories and unheard voices of our artisans and craftsmen. What are some of your competitors & what advantage do you have over them? & Briefly explain your revenue model? There are no competitors. We have our contemporaries who work on similar ideologies as us. The only competitor that we all are dealing with, collectively, is fast fashion. We have a set of wholesale buyers primarily in the international market who add on to 30% of our annual revenue. Apart from that, we supply to over 25-30 multi-brand online & offline retail stores in the country which comprises another 30% of our revenue. Rest, we have our line of direct consumers & potential clients that we have created & generated in the last 5 years. These direct consumers, contribute 40% to our annual revenue. What difficulties did you encounter when you started the company & Were you impacted by the Covid outbreak? The initial investment was a minor roadblock in the beginning but the major setback was finding the right set of artisans & laborers who would be willing to unlearn their past learnings and adapt new & experimental techniques with an open mind. Yes, we were impacted but not severely, we had to bring our team back together. The process got a little slower and work got delayed. All throughout, we had to keep everyone's safety in mind and also try and stick to the deadlines. It took a while to get in touch with the weavers, get the fabrics sourced, woven, and dyed. We had to give constant reassurances to the whole team with regards to the consistency of their work & jobs. COVID-19 gave us a new dimension to look at things. Although it did affect our process & elongated the journey. Our collections are all about how to look at every scenario from a new perspective. I believe that there is an opportunity to reinvent & redesign the ideologies of sustainability and their due course of channels considering the present scenario that we are living in. The present landscape has given us a chance to reset our beliefs and to understand how we can live with bare necessities. What are your future plans & launches? Presently we are focusing on launching our new jewelry line and our first-ever flagship store in the country. Current company size, work culture, Hiring Funda The Loom Art is presently a team of 20 people with an extension of different weavers and craft clusters that work with us distinctively. Happy clothes made by Happy Hands is the motto of our brand. We believe in creating transparent channels of working and a happy & homely environment. We are open to hiring creative individuals who have the zeal of spark in them to create everything from scratch, believes in similar ideologies as us, and is a positive soul with an overdose of energy. How did you launch The Loom Art when you had just 0 users. Which channels/ tools/strategies worked the most for acquiring the first 100 users? We started with our initial online retail platform. Started participating in shows and events to create some brand awareness. And then we started reaching out to multi-designer stores/platforms and collaborated with them to increase our horizon and to be able to cater to a larger audience. Our social media and E-commerce platforms helped the most in acquiring the first 100 users. A piece of advice for the readers. Set a goal and take smaller steps every day towards it to achieve them. Always look for the bigger picture and celebrate smaller achievements.

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