Completion of 40 years in the apparel business, 25 years of helming a growing organization and close to achieving the magical turnover of Rs. 100 crore, can be a proud moment for anybody but for Kusum Uppal, Founder of New Delhi Export House (NDEH), Noida, which is just another milestone in her long career. A familydriven company, NDEH has achieved 100 per cent growth in the last five years, yet is not in an expansion mood but has instead set targets for optimization of current setup. A firm believer of spreading out risks, NDEH is working with on an average 28 buyers from mass to class with not more than 8 per cent turnover dedicated to any one of them. With priority to work with virgin markets and relatively newer buyers, Kusum shares her journey and vision with Apparel Online.
Kusum Uppal looks after production and overall administration. Her enthusiastic son Pranav has a much focused approach and takes care of marketing while his wife Aarti looks after design development and fit department. All of them believe that ‘you are as good as your last delivery, so only commit what you can deliver and keep walking’
Always on the lookout for new opportunities, very recently NDEH started working with a very good buyer in South Korea, a country where hardly 3 per cent of Indian exporters are doing business. Similarly, the company started working in Brazil and Argentina five years ago, and in 2010 opened a marketing office in Brazil because of which today the company is enjoying the opportunity to work with bulk as well as high-end buyers (who take products for US $ 12-14) in both the countries. “We don’t believe in the rat race and one can’t base their strategy on what others are doing, so exploring newer markets and newer buyers is our strength as well as the reason of our growth too,” says Kusum. She further adds, “While Argentina is still considered a virgin market, Brazil has been highlighted from the last two years and more orders are coming from there. To enter such market, we also hire local marketing teams.” Kusum entered the apparel trade in 1975 and exported to Israel, but she mostly did job-work and finally in 1990 got her first major order from the French buyer Rene Derhy, and to her credit NDEH is still working with the company.
Serving a mix of buyers, from boutique to high-end, in almost a dozen countries with a product range including basic, medium and value-added items, is naturally challenging. To ensure that each account is effectively catered to, NDEH has 7 teams of merchandisers with each having its own fit department. The company admits that maintaining a big team does affect the bottom line, though marginally and overheads compared to other companies are also higher, which impacts competitive costing. “We are mostly working on our own developments and provide products to the taste of customers right from Northern Hampshire to Southern Hampshire, across the world. Every 6-8 weeks we have official shopping trips abroad, based on which we try to analyze what is possible in Indian fabric. We try to give something extra to buyers by showing that this is in the market and this is what we have developed,” she says.
“For us bottom line is important. Turnover of Rs. 70 crore is manageable from a bottom line point of view. With an increase in turnover, marginal cost also increases and it impacts the bottom line. We are good pay masters but strict on our payment schedule, which is fixed for the conveniences of our vendors.” – Shukdev Sadhoo, Director – Finance, NDEH
Interestingly, as a part of the company strategy, NDEH works for some mass market giants, but only in smaller countries so that the order sizes are not in bulk. “There is no dearth of business, we can easily cater to top buyers known for bulk orders, but they will book us for months in six styles and we will not get the margins which we are getting, the work will also be easier but we prefer to work with larger number of buyers so that our business is not affected by any external reasons or geo political conditions,” adds Kusum. Manufacturing 300,000 units per month of woven garments for ladies and girls at its 4 factories, NDEH has already shipped 12.57 lakh units from April 2015 up to 31st August, enjoying a margin of 8 to 9 per cent.
Having strengths like wide buyer base, rich industry experience and strong PD department the company believes that it can do much more business, but before that it is moving towards optimization of current setup and has already improved a lot on efficiency levels and is striving to achieve more. Few years back, the company had efficiency of 8.5 garments per tailor in a shift but with the help of consultations now it is on 14.6 garments in same conditions but its target is 16.5 pieces. “By increasing our efficiency and optimizing all resources we can achieve a turnover of Rs. 120 crore with the current setup. We could probably do a turnover of Rs. 250 crore with little extra push, but the critical question is ‘will we be able to take care or handle that’, we don’t think… after all, consistency is equally important. We also believe on our own finance rather than depend on banking, so we don’t want to expand further, at least just now. One can say that we are a little conservative but we are very happy to do what we are doing,” concludes Kusum.
