Started just about six months back, Gurgaon based buying office USP Clothing is catering to the European and South American markets. While discussing the details of operations and products, Uday Sabharwal, the Founder and Owner of the company shares with Apparel Online, “We are sourcing high-end embellished products from Delhi, basic tees from Tirupur and basic and value-added products in various washes from Bangladesh.”
Though last year the European market was sluggish, USP has not been affected by it. “We were not affected as much since we are catering mostly to high-end market, however, for basic products we had to change sourcing strategies and offer various options to the customer, which I guess saved us from losing business,” reasons Uday.
Talking about South American market where he is mostly working through importers, Uday says that the choice of the garments is very similar to that of Europe and thanks to his decision to source products from Bangladesh which is giving very good value-added products especially the washes, he has been able to feed the market successfully. “The quantities which we are procuring for the South American market vary from 100 to1500 pieces per style with FOB ranging between US $ 10 to US $ 100 per piece,” states Uday, who prior to venturing into his own sourcing business, has working experience with leading export and buying houses like Trendsetters, NSK Textiles, Li & Fung to mention the prominent ones.
While choosing his vendors, Uday looks into how the company is in terms of merchandising skills, production capability and quality assurance, as the FOBs are high, besides the product range that the company is manufacturing. “It is very critical to make sure that rejection percentage is nil, so a lot of due diligence is done before finalizing vendor base,” points out Uday.
Having entered into the buying business just six months ago, Uday is keeping a conservative target for his first year turnover which is approximately 1 million in 2013. However, he is already looking at adding more buyers.
