The home division at Pearl Global is a relatively new venture, started just about 1½ years back. Headed by Pulkit Seth as the Managing Director, the home division was developed by Nimish Dave, Chief Operating Officer, who draws rich experience in home furnishing manufacturing and buying from companies like Ikea and Orient Craft and who was looking at becoming an entrepreneur by starting a home furnishing company. His entrepreneurial ambitions and Pulkit’s desire to diversify into other product categories resulted in the home division of Pearl. Today the company is catering to all top home furnishing brands and retailers of US, Canada and Europe be it Laura Ashley, Calvin Klein, West Point Home; Macy’s, Yves Delorme, Chakra, Petmate… to mention a few. Nimish shares his success journey with Team Apparel Online…
Like any other start up business, the first year was a struggle; however Nimish got full support of the top brass of Pearl. In spite of the fact that Pearl has more than 20 years association with all big brands and retailers like JCPenney, Kohl’s, Macy’s, GAP, etc., the home furnishing division has developed its own clientele. “We started our business with top home furnishing global players though normally in many cases the garment exporters ventured into home furnishing because of their existing client base who also have home business. In my view the mother company’s existing client base can only open a door but to finally get business, there comes a lot of underlined factors; now that we have proved our metal, we’ll meet our existing apparel clients like Macy’s etc,” points out Nimish.
Design is the king for high-end furnishing brands
Pearl’s home division is very creative and design centric. However, nothing comes easily and all design sensibility falls short before the buyers we work with who all have an amazing eye for perfection. “We have learnt a lot from our high-end customers. I remember when we sent the first sample to Ralph Lauren, they failed us and we were surprised as we could not find any fault in our product. But when they sent us back the product with 16 dots (marking out the imperfections), we ourselves could see the flaws as they were so obvious and we were left wondering!” He adds, “Now our designs don’t fail but it took us six months to reach there.”
Different and new product category… Dog’s Bedding
“I am very happy with a new account called Petmate, a US based company which is the largest importer of Pet’s accessories in the world,” states Nimish. Petmate has just started importing from India, this is their first season and they have placed a few styles for dog beds with Pearl. Petmate has huge range of accessories; Pearl just does the textile bit and the first shipment which the company has already sent was for 11,000 pieces and the current lot is of another 14,000 pieces. “I guess we’ll be able to do a sizeable amount of business with them,” adds Nimish.
Petmate, a US $ 650 million catalogue company, controls close to 65 to 70% of pet accessories business in America as a distributor of pet accessories to all the US retailers who have pet aisle in their retail stores. Petmate has preferred denim for dog bed. The company has also recently developed fabric which is made out of recycled yarns which has a very tough texture. Buyers prefer toughness in dog’s bedding because the dogs generally scratch or bite everything possible; flimsy textile is just out of question. “The pet beds are all machine washable. Our beds are absolutely colour fast and all safety norms are adhered; it goes though several checks like any other human product,” asserts Nimish.
There is no variation in the size of this product, with standard size of 27 inches by 36 inches. “We just make the shells of the bed; the fibre filling is done in Dallas, US, sealed and soldto the retailer,” informs Nimish who is also executing orders for cat’s beds.
Manufacturing and working for usual products was not what Nimish was destined to. The idea of expanding further into pet accessories made the company participate at the recently concluded annual event for pets, the Atlanta Pet Fair, where the company’s designs were an absolute rage. “Three of the largest retail chains have shown interest in our products. Even I was amazed at the kind of response we received for this product,” confesses Nimish.
To increase business with existing clients
Pearl is quite satisfied with its existing client base as with their factory size, 12 to 14 customers from Europe and US combined is good and very manageable and would keep them reasonably engaged for next 4-5 years. “We need to service our clients well and grow business with them rather than adding new clients as each new customer adds costs, which includes lots of product development,” avers Nimish.
The management at Pearl feels that they should focus on healthy bottom line rather than having top line driven approach. Both, the Chairman, Deepak Seth and the MD have a clear vision that the company has to be extremely profit driven. “I fully subscribe to their approach. What’s the point of chasing sale number while you are not making profits! Albeit our existing client’s volumes are not big but their price points are reasonably good,” he adds.
Ralph Lauren is placing a substantial portion of sourcing for home segment with Pearl. The company has recently added Calvin Klein as its buyer at Heimtextil this year. Through Li & Fung, Hudson & Bay, the Canadian retail giant has started sourcing decorative cushions from Pearl. “In January we shipped cushions to them and now we expect a lot of programmes coming to us,” shares Nimish who is also looking at increasing its business with Chakra, a Turkish retail chain and catalogue having 22 stores in Turkey dedicated to home furnishings. Chakra is intending to double their stores over the period of next two years by entering into Germany and other European countries as well.
Pearl is seeing good growth in the top of the bed which is the core product for the company. Besides bed, decorative cushions are a promising category for the company and it is looking at scaling up its volumes with Hudson & Bay as they have a sizeable capacity. “Throws again is a very new product; the order came from West Point. Lastly, we are looking at dog beds to grow exponentially with Pearl in next two-three years,” concludes Nimish.
