START-UP ISLAND. Perfect fit, Vitruvien style

Start-up Island recently spoke to a lady entrepreneur in the alcoholic beverages space who was brewing and distributing her brand of liquor herself, while testing successfully in semi-urban markets. Simply because it’s interesting to see how the small take on the mighty, we look at a venture that operates in the space of bespoke menswear, a segment replete with well-known names.

Rajesh Goradia was involved in his family textile business when he hit upon the idea of Vitruvien. He shared it with two of his friends, who loved it enough to get on board as co-founders and help him run the business. With Vitruvien, everything hinges upon its indigenous platform that allows customisation of not just shirts, but even buttons and monograms. The company kicked off operations in December 2013. It has reportedly produced 5,000 shirts and recorded ₹1 crore in sales.

Bespoke fashion, and especially menswear, in India has designers such as Raghavendra Rathore and Abraham & Thakore to well-known brands such as SS Homme, Bombay Shirts and Tailorman catering to businessmen, bankers, sportspersons and celebrities by offering made-to-measure suits to shirts and trousers. International brands such as Brioni and Canal also compete for a piece of this pie. With some of these names, an appointment is necessary and a conventional rigmarole follows, which Vitruvien specifically tries to address.

“We’re setting ourselves apart from Saville Row brands and high-end custom tailors in India by bringing international standards of quality custom shirts to Indian consumers at affordable price points, and offering this on an e-commerce platform,” explains Rajesh Goradia, Co-founder, Vitruvien.

Vitruvien only offers shirts at the moment and is looking at honing its range before expanding into other apparel. The company views the shirt as the ‘heart of the wardrobe.

Goradia says that while the company isn’t raking in profits, they’ll up the ante on sales and revenues over an 18-month period. In spite of being limited to shirts at the moment, Vitruvien’s customers range from professionals in the corporate sector about 25-45 years old and they don’t seem to mind spending more to look good. “We’re at the premium end of the market, and our value proposition is not price though it is for other players. Our prices range from ₹1,300 to ₹2,900. We really believe you don’t fit into a shirt, the shirt needs to fit you. So we’re striving to make bespoke the de facto choice of dressing for discerning Indian men,” he elaborates. Vitruvien operates independently of Goradia’s textiles business. The start-up has been self-funded and has had more than ₹25 lakh of investment. Much of this has gone into key areas of marketing and web development. The company has frozen on an agreement with Blue Dart for logistics, while the reliability of courier partners was an issue earlier. A prime focus in the next few months will be to double shirt designs and offerings. Early next year, the start-up will look at the international market.

“Men want to dress well, but they don’t necessarily want to spend too much time doing so. Our delivery timelines are 7-10 days. We sometimes have 10-15 regular customers who order about 10-15 shirts at a time,” says Goradia. So with regular patronage and sales figures recorded in just under a year, Vitruvien seems set to make a dent in the market in a couple of years. An expansion into international markets will see it competing with brands like the Australian start-up InStitchu.