A specialist in sourcing medium and high grade accessories from China and Hong Kong for the apparel export industry, Gurgaon based Stitch Shell started its operations in 1991 through its parental company Stitch Aid, involved in the trade of products sourced from India, majorly threads. Known for their product quality, on-time delivery and competitive prices, the company expanded its operations in 1994 to establish base in China to coordinate directly with the manufacturers to source the best products as demanded by the exporters.
“We directly show the samples to the exporters and once they approve, orders are placed with the companies in China and the products are sent directly to the exporters. We prefer to work on product developments, rather than on stocks and 90% of our business runs directly from the exporters in China,” says Rajeev Mendiratta, Partner, Stitch Shell on maintaining a simple trade process between the companies and exporters for complete transparency.
Dealing with a wide range of products that includes laces, buttons, tapes, belts, studs, labels and tags, zipper sliders and neck laces, the company adds new styles to their inventory every other month, discarding the old ones. Some standard basic items are always in stock. “We update our inventory every 15 days and don’t want to add any new products as the current portfolio has become our strength and we have created a complete chain to supply these products in line with international norms of quality and delivery,” says Rajeev.
Stitch Shell has a very clear sourcing strategy in place. “Place of sourcing of the product depends on the base price of the product and specific requirement of the customer. Like polyester buttons, which are cheaper in India and are of a very good quality, so we depend more on Indian suppliers for this category,” elaborated Rajeev.
With a well defined sourcing mechanism, as the company has technical tie ups with the manufacturers in China, to address any specific demand made by their clients, Stitch Shell is capable of delivering accessories to its clients as per their specifications and quantities, despite the lack of their own manufacturing units. “China is very flexible for delivering customized products in any quantity required, they might up-charge you for such services but they deliver to any sort of requests and consumer demand without any quantity restraints,” says Rajeev. The lead time including the developments of the products by Chinese manufacturers is 5 to 7 days, while the delivery of ready products is done on the same day. Shipments from China take around 8 to 10 days.
Contrary to general perceptions, Rajeev maintains “We are not really interested in getting any nominations, as sometimes it gets hard to meet the supplier’s demands and the prices are unnecessarily hiked, so we are happy catering to an open market. We are working on quantities, services and merit of the product. We are extremely confident of our product and that is why we know it will sell even without nominations from big names.” Although Stitch Shell has a pan-Indian market penetration with a huge client base in the south, the company is happy catering to that market from the NCR.
[bleft]We update our inventory every 15 days and don’t want to add any new products as the current portfolio has become our strength and we have created a complete chain to supply these products in line with international norms of quality and delivery – Rajeev Mendiratta Partner, Stitch Shell[/bleft]
Facing the impacts of the slow market and less work with the exporters, with sales dropping by 20-25%, Stitch Shell believes in waiting patiently for the storm to pass by. “The best strategy to survive at the moment is to wait and watch. Personally we don’t even believe in making panic sales and I am very careful while choosing clients as hasty decisions are seldom right when it comes to working with someone new. From what we have gathered it will take one to one-and-a-half years for things to go back to normal and we choose to sit patiently till then,” comments Rajeev. Looking at the positive outcome from the current economic conditions, Stitch Shell believes that this difficult phase will prove to be a learning phase for the entire industry and it would come out of the phase with experience and better understanding.
Though there is an increase in the demand for sustainable products, the company claims that there hasn’t been much impact of the same in their business, as their products have always been at par with such parameters. Talking about the changes the industry needs right now, Rajeev said, “The accessory trade at the moment is extremely unorganized, we sometimes have to go out of our way to serve our clients as they place their orders extremely late. What the industry needs to understand is that they should place the orders for their accessories well in advance to avoid any problems in their cycles of production. Sufficient lead time is required to guarantee quality and delivery which the exporters have started to understand.
Bharat Tex Special Report 2026 
