A sea of orange in a five-star hotel. A 100-odd boisterous group of men and women, ranging from 25-50 years. A few blobs of orange shuttling up and down the lobby. It is evident they are all part of one group. This is a company that had just taken its employees out for a refresher course and the celebrations mark its end.
It was the fluorescent orange that united this rambunctious lot. A keener eye would have perhaps detected a few sombre heads as they smiled more and laughed a tad lesser than the younger lot. The colour of the t-shirts they sported blurred the divide; the single piece of dress had the lot of hundred living it up together – the embossed logo on their left breasts adding to the picture of the organisation they represented.
T-shirts are increasingly being used to unite people across all hues for a cause, as a corporate ensemble to enthuse employees, build brand loyalty, as a point of display for the company’s attitude by emblazoning its motto or slogan, and often reinforce the corporate identity with stakeholders. One company’s best advertisement sign board, another organisation’s favourite logo-embossed Saturdaywear, yet another enterprise’s most popular corporate gift, the t-shirt has emerged as an institutional souvenir, brand communicator, and even a token of company loyalty.
When cricket or football comes calling, the t-shirt is the humble leveller once again, as all together sport the united colours of the nation. Indiatimes shopping, one of the largest Net portal sold some 60,000 t-shirts in 60 days during the last cricket world cup. “The craze was seen to be believed”, says Ashish Kashyap, GM, e-commerce, Indiatimes. Many other organisations rake in similar profits if not more during such countrywide events. Then there are wildlife organisations, charity do’s that use the tee as a medium of communicating their message. This is one piece of apparel that can be ordered in bulk, is excellent in terms of quality vis-à-vis low costs and can be customised as per requirement in terms of colour, cut, style or theme. Thus, it did not take very long for knit brand manufacturers to get into institutional sales of this product.
“We are big players in corporate sales, with focus on apparel. It is a large segment, and growing. It also offers us a chance to reach our regular consumers directly. Our main vehicle is our knitwear brand Byford, which is the leader in this segment. However, we are also getting a strong response for our mainline brands like Van Heusen and Peter England. The lead garment in Byford is the t-shirt, but we also offer other attractive knitwear elements,” Hemchandra Javeri, president, Madura Garments told IMAGES BoF. The MG list of clientele includes Airtel, Bosch Corporation, SAP, Siemens, ING Vysya, Samsung, Sify, Taj Group and several others.
Byford, an established casualwear/knits brand from the MG portfolio, was repositioned as a corporate solution provider for customised corporatewear under the nomen ‘Byford Corporate Gloss’, elaborates Mathew Jacob, head, institutional sales. On offer is a range of products (over 90 options of t-shirts, shirts, jackets and accessories) which are exclusively for corporate customers (not retailed in stores). All options are catalogued for easy referencing and are available with customisation (in the form of an embroidered/printed logo or legend) and are delivered within two weeks.
“This is a proposition which we believe offers the widest choice to a customer and in quick time. We also work with the clients to design their apparel needs keeping in mind their corporate identities and profiles and have an exclusive design team to help clients with ideas for logos and slogans – a first time in the apparel business”.
“With our other MG brands like Van Heusen, Peter England, Louis Philippe, Allen Solly and SF Jeans Co, we offer the brand merchandise directly to corporate clients – be it for their apparel kit allowances or privilege cards for their employees.”
The Byford Corporate Gloss range is ideal for corporate events, new joinee kit, training programmes, sporting events, campus recruitment, road shows, sales promotions, corporate uniforms, corporate gifting, college/schools events, etc.
Since this package is a product/service bundle, the sales process is predominantly through a network of direct sales area co-ordinators located in key corporate centres with back-end support staff.
There are very many other brands and non-brands into institutional selling of this category killer. Classic Polo from the Royal Classic Group which caters to the t-shirt requirement of corporates like Hyundai Motors, Wipro Computers, The Economic Times, The Hindu, Ras Gas (Saudi Arabia), etc, has no dedicated team working on it. But, says its brand head, Anand Aiyer, “Since there is potential for growth in this sector we will be setting up an exclusive team to focus on corporate sales.”
Crocodile Products Pvt Ltd provides some 80,000 pieces annually under the brand names Crocodile and Aiko (economy) towards institutional sales to companies like Foseco, GMMCO, Bayer India, GE, Asianet, etc, generating business to the tune of Rs 2 crore.
Yet another brand, Trigger, largely into denimwear, also occasionally supplies tees under two brands specifically for institutional sales – Privys and Trevi, to some telecom companies and IT firms. The overall sales accrued from the corporate sales that includes denimwear comes to around Rs 3 crore annually.
In a world apart from brands, New Delhi houses a niche shop catering only to t-shirts. The T-Shirt Shop, as it is called, claims sloganeering and good quality, at prices as low as Rs 190 a piece, to be its forte. The husband-wife duo of Atul and Namrata Kapur run the shop and look after the entire manufacturing process at their Mehrauli workshop which can churn out 1,500 pieces a day. While Atul has done a course on t-shirt printing from the US, Namrata a consultant designer with Indus Clothing was from the first batch that passed out from NIFT. They retail out of one outlet in South Extension, and another will shortly open at the Kamala Nagar market. The case with the Kapur’s has been quite contrary to what the major brands have experienced in terms of corporate sales.
Having started with institutional selling during the cricket world cup in 1995-96 and then supplying in huge numbers to major MNC’s, 70 per cent of their business was geared towards this. Of late, however, they have reversed the trend and now 70 per cent comes from the shop. “We do a lot of small requirements and cater to schools in a big way. We have cut down with corporates simply because there is too much red-tape involved and with large organisations, payments take an inordinately long time,” says Atul. The T-Shirt Shop has now augmented its offering by importing a lot of tees in superior quality.
Does the souvenir tee really serve to bond with the employee? While some like Achla Srivastava love to flaunt the company’s name, Siddharth N V from Oracle, Hyderabad has collected three such mementoes. “I feel good about them”, he says candidly.
Feel good, bond well, great gift – the tee is definitely brewing colours.
