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Maybell: Innovating Designs In Traditional Attire

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Sridhar Venkatesh, FounderIt is apparent why presentday designers hinge to the art of revoking traditional Indian attires through their collections. Sharp coloured and accurately beaded embellishments on the apparels evince the skills of a design enthusiast for juxtaposing traditional tone with the contemporary one. In a country like India that bears diverse cultures, Indian designers can never run out of designs to draw inspiration from. Borrowing a fraction of the traditional Indian apparel designs to blend with the contemporary style was novel to the people when Maybell was initially incorporated during 1999 under the company Opus Fashion Private Limited. The brand was engaged in the design and manufacture of lounge wear and nightwear in the succeeding days of its establishment.

Sridhar Venkatesh saw many ups and downs as an entrepreneur before he launched the brand Maybell. The brand caters to the tastes and preferences of South Indian Women by using fabrics like Kalamkari and Ikkat for nightwear. Maybell invested time and efforts to alter the conventional cylindrical night gown into an A line silhouette that made women to walk around more comfortably. The brand embarks on a journey to reinvent the traditional art form into the concept of ready-to-wear fashion through the supply of customized products capsulated in South Indian Culture and demography.

Maybell acquires fabrics from Varanasi, Jaipur, Mumbai and Surat and are manufactured according to the season. The brand expanded its product category to incorporate other categories like Tunic, kurta, skirts, Pyjama and Kidswear after being the most popular brand amongst the MBOs and regional retailers. Currently, Maybell produces over 12 lakh pieces of Ethnic wear in a year with products making it to the Top Four Fast Moving lines at the major multibrand outlets. The brand’s e-commerce platform that was operated in 2018 was able to drive the brand to more customers and channelized them into the website. “We research on our data to identify the trend sought season after season. Today there are lot of people who draw the idea of Trend Analytics”, explains Sridhar Venkatesh, the Founder of Maybell. The brand is expected to gain exponential growth from e-commerce post 2020. Through e-commerce, Maybell foresees to sell a good number of value proportions to the customers.

Maybell has a majority of Women employees from weaker Financial backgrounds. They are trained in tailoring and assisted with developing skills before bringing them to the factories. These women are mostly from

The brand caters to the tastes and preferences of south indian women by using fabrics like KALAMKARI and IKKAT for nightwear








the near by localities of the factories across Chennai. The company is developing its analytical capabilities through the ERP system and also embracing technology to understand the customers much better. In a market inundated with National Players who deliver Pan Indian products of apparel, Maybell has become a trail blazer that has zeroed in to manufacture products on regional basis. Last year, the mural painting printed on a mustard Kurta as well as skirt received a lot of attention among the design Connoisseurs. Sridhar is of the opinion that a product alone can't be sold and that it is important for a concept to be sold along with it. In this case, the concept being of the South Indian Tradition. The company has projected a growth rate of 40 percent in the last two years. Having more than 150 employees in the organization, Maybell as a brand continues to design and promote products rooted in South Indian Culture.