Having the advantage of a huge vertical integrated set-up and strong thrust on R&D, Mumbai-based Ginger Enterprises (Ginger Clothing), also popularly known as the ‘master of knits’, is moving forward with confidence, under the guidance of its focused third-generation owners. In an exclusive interaction with Team Apparel Resources, Sanjay Tayal along with his son Aditya, who joined the business two years ago after attaining a management degree in Finance and Marketing from Boston, shared their vision for the company. Talking to Aditya, it is obvious that GenNext has a deep and clear understanding of the industry which makes his company better prepared to take on all the upcoming challenges with a progressive and long-term planning.
Aditya’s two-year experience in the company has made him realize the importance of team spirit rather than functioning in an isolated way. “Now when I come to work, I am excited about it as compared to my early days. There are many businesses where you make a decision today and you see the result in a week or a month or maximum after three months, but in our industry, any change that you incorporate, shows results quite late, may be after more than three months. I am myself seeing the results of the decisions which I took last year. This is the biggest boost,” he says enthusiastically.
Ginger Group, today covers the entire textile supply chain and has 12 units, out of which 3 are allocated to garmenting; this is a far cry from the humble beginning as a fabric manufacturer. Upon joining, Aditya initially took control of the marketing and production portfolio at Ginger but his passion for innovation motivated him to take on the additional responsibility of R&D in the knitting segment. At present, Ginger Enterprises is supported by an R&D team of over 40 people. Moreover, to have a better control on quality and developments, he is looking at adding dyeing to his multifarious portfolio. Among his varied future plans, the one which remains his primary target is to enter the domestic market with his own brand which needs to be sold through MBOs and online. “I am not thinking of retail at this point as already some big players are there with the kind of money one needs to sustain in retail. I feel that more than retail, what could be more successful for the future may be building a domestic brand for mid-segment as it is easier to push and there is space also,” reasons Aditya.
“It is not as if we are weak in polyester, but it was never really required and the duty structure on polyester since last two decades was on the higher side, compared to the international scenario. When I joined the industry, polyester used to be Rs. 200 per kg (mostly because of duty structure), while cotton was Rs. 22 per kg; now cotton is around Rs. 200 per kg and polyester is around Rs. 90 to 95 per kg. We are masters in polyester from last 3 decades and doing huge quantities of fabrics, processes, digital printing… in polyester.” – Sanjay Tayal
Another thing that Aditya disagrees with is the start-up concept, which according to him is overhyped, even though it is not a proven formula for success. He strongly believes that being a part of an established business is always more safe and beneficial rather than going for a completely new establishment. As Aditya states candidly, “Though in our business, profits have gone down and competition has increased, it is still a reliable business compared to most other businesses. Being in third-generation, we have deeper roots and hence, we are more stable and strong. GST is also going to be a game changer as overall system is going to be more transparent, systematic and bringing in changes will be much easier.” He shares that being personally involved with customers has really cut down on feedback time. “I am adding seed in terms of value to the company,” he adds happily.
Adding technology, both for better systems and productivity, however is something that the company is still mauling over. “As 70-80 per cent staff here has been with us for 15-20 years, I don’t want to introduce something which can be an issue for them. But by next year, we plan to add some technology on the production side and implement the ERP system, as multi-plants are doing multiple things and it is important to be updated on a real-time basis. Because of my father’s expertise which comes from several years of experience, he can take decisions without data, but if more or comparatively newer people have to take decisions, they will obviously need data,” argues Aditya.
All of the company’s facilities are in the radius of 200 sq. km from Mumbai. Its knitting, dyeing, processing and garmenting are in and around New Mumbai and Dombivali, while spinning is in Gujarat and polyester spinning is in Silvassa. Most of these areas are not as costly as Mumbai and still have availability of labour and land.
The company offers a large variety of innovative fabrics like specialized spacer fabric used in high-end lingerie. The same fabric is also used in shoes and bags.
The company caters to all segments of the market and each of its division is treated as a separate profit centre. Sanjay shares the thought process behind this move, “Even if we need yarns for our own fabric division, we check market price as well as price of our yarn division and buy accordingly. The same is applicable to purchase of fabrics for garment unit also. It keeps everyone in the company, specially the marketing division, in touch with what is going on in the market and there is no complacency.” The garment division of the company mostly uses fabric from its in-house mill, which is offering around 80 to 90 per cent of its capacities to the open market.
Sharing his learnings from his long journey in the industry, Sanjay is of the strong view that change is the only constant thing in textile business, so promoters have to give free hand and facilities to its production heads to always innovate, to do experiments, so as to turn in good results. Sanjay shares proudly how recently his R&D team has developed some really interesting washes on knitted fabric, which is not everybody’s cup of tea. Hence, Ginger Enterprises looks at long term trends and not short-term fads when developing new concepts. “For example, athleisure is a very promising segment for knitted industry with a long-term growth prospect and therefore, we are focusing on it. We give such treatments which enhance comfort factor of the fabric and it is not easy to identify whether it is polyester or cotton…,” concludes Sanjay with pride.