With a focus on brand image and consumer experience, Bangalore-based brand Cool Colors is making waves in the South Indian apparel retail sector. Cool Colors, which offers a unique shopping experience to patrons has a strong network of exclusive retail showrooms across the four major South Indian states of Karnataka, Tamil Nadu, Andhra Pradesh, and Kerala.
The brand is now major in-roads into the Eastern region of India. Praveen Mutha, Managing Director, Bafna Clothing Company – who has over 20 years of experience in the garment industry – heads the company. In an exclusive interview with IMAGES Retail, he talks about the growth, expansion and future strategies of Cool Colors. Excerpts from the chat…
Tell us about your brand history.
Bafna Clothing Company, the parent company of Cool Colors, has been in the business of garment making for over 35 years now. It is considered to be one India’s fastest growing garment makers and is now an ISO 9001 company, established as a well-respected and renowned brand.
Based in Bengaluru, Bafna has a steady presence across India, Singapore and UAE, along with a wide range of online services as well.
What is the USP of your brand?
We are a shirts brand for men and we decide the percentage of our products based on our consumer preferences. Currently our manufacturing breakup is 40 percent check-design shirts, 30 percent block colours and 30 percent printed shirts.
Cool Colors, which has dedicatedly worked on building its brand image, has broken free of the ‘just another brand’ impression. We are consciously working to become an alternative to mainstream brands and not just the immediate competition. We provide the best quality of clothes at affordable prices to our consumers.
What is your current brand reach?
The brand operates across leading stores in India, Singapore and the UAE, with over 1,200 MBOs and four EBOs. We are also present in large format stores such as Reliance and Brand Factory. Since we have been actively present in the market, we have focused on creating a strong presence across Tier I, II & III cities.
What in-store experiences are you offering consumers?
The brand evokes interest among its customers with an engrossing setup. We make sure that our customers are comfortable and are well assisted by dedicated and trained staff to ensure they make the right purchase and go home happy. We focus on giving consumers strong in-store promotions that help our products gain greater visibility.
Do you have an Omnichannel strategy?
We focus on a combination of traditional retail stores and online shopping through our online partners Flipkart and Amazon. This strategy has been working well for us, giving us a steady growth, coupled with our use of social media marketing as a key driver for engaging customers and promoting online sales. The greatest success still comes from the traditional retail stores where customers are free to indulge in in-store experiences.
What are your expansion plans? What is your retail strategy?
We are working on increasing our distribution network through a mix of EBOs and MBOs. We have also improved our market portfolio to cater to our consumers.
Apart from this, we are beginning to enter into the Eastern India retail space, where we have focused our resources in understanding the challenges as well as opportunities for creating a sustainable business in the region.
