India Fashion Forum 2010 Review and Franchising 

What an exciting week. Like all good things, India Fashion Forum too had to come to an end. Two Days, over 1000 Brands and even more delegates, along with lots of networking. The India Fashion Forum was supported by Way2Franchise Corp. We are happy to support this event, make all those connections. 

There were about 30 Clothing and Apparel Franchise Brands present at the event.  Some of the brands at the event were: Ballyfabs, Barista Belmonte, Blackberry, Chhabra Triple Five Fashions, Gini & Jony, Gitanjali, Lifestyle Isabelle, Lerros, Liberty Shoes, Manyavar, FI India, Hunt Accessories, Lilliput, Bespoke Clothing, PUMA, Raymonds, Spykar, Titan, Tommy Hilfiger, Triumph and a few other franchise, business and retail opportunities. There were several startup franchisors present at the event. I would not take those franchise opportunities very seriously.  

Mr. Gautam Singhania, the MD of Raymonds Ltd. was the Chairperson and the Keynote for this event, he started off a little delayed, however his speech was well worth it. He started off by comparing India and China. He said that while India has several apparel brands that have made an impact internationally, very few have been able to do so from China. Even domestically, China does not have any noteworthy brands. While, China is very export driven, India has a very strong robust domestic market. India vs. China in the clothing and apparel business is more like Value vs. Volume. India ranks high in value and has seen its exports increase gradually. The strong Indian domestic market has today led to Raymonds Ltd. being the world's largest producer or worsted wool. 

The Raymonds Store, continues to grow very rapidly within India as well. One of the recent store openings was at a district in Barwan UP, (considering franchise expansion only in Class 4 and 5 towns). It was a 2500 sq ft store and one of the first day it clocked a sale of a whopping Rs. 21 Lakhs, on the second day it was another Rs. 7.5 Lakhs. This just explains the power of franchising. Raymonds is today one of the oldest franchise brands in this country. 

The India Fashion Forum continues to be one of the biggest forums for the fashion industry, it is not just the industry stalwarts that attend this event, but it also the franchisees of all of these companies. It is a great one for networking as well. The event was concluded along with Images Fashion Awards, on a nice star studded evening. 

The year 2009: Learnings as an Entrepreneur

2009 has been a great year for me and Way2Franchise.com, we went through a ride, a very exciting one, just like the Revenge of The Mummy Ride, I experienced at Universal Studios Park at LA. Thrilling, Exciting and exasperating, little do you realise that it would get over in the flashes of flashes. The roller coaster analogy can be better applied of what we went through in earlier in 2009, one morning we wake up and we feel our idea can change the world, the next day, we feel doomed. 

Some of the brief learnings, just penning it down: 

If you say what you mean and mean what you say, you are probably in the 10% of all people. This is what your clients would appreciate. A candid approach did get a lot of people excited and encouraged them to contribute thoughts and idea. Honesty pays and pays in leaps and bounds

Make an offer, that they cant refuse:  Our online business is all about sales, in fact for most businesses it would be the driving force or the life blood. It is difficult when you are a startup to get new customers interested. We tried out a free 50 Franchisee leads offer. Franchisors are always looking for qualified leads, clients pay as much as Rs. 1000 for every  qualified lead, here is it that you get a value of Rs. 5000. 

Small is still Beautiful is more than a book: We started off with over 18 competitors in our business and each one of them had an average team of 35. Can Small be beautiful, absolutely? Team size has nothing to do with success. A team of 4, thinking unanimously of enhancing the entrepreneur experience can mean a lot than a team much bigger, with deep pockets trying to do everything for everybody. 

Thoughts do become reality: The power of Secret comes alive, when you simply believe it. We believed we can offer a better solution, today, Thank Goodness, Way2Franchise.com and FranchiseExpo.in have catapulted to #2 Position. All of the hard work does pay off. In the past, during my previous stint with Franchising Association of India, I took up ownership and took an active interest, a lot of times, people advised me, is that really your company, but I kept going and now I realise that some of my smallest learnings are paying rich dividends. confirming that no effort ever gets wasted. 

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