Wills Lifestyles successful Ramp to Rack initiative-Texglobe

The Wills Lifestyle India Fashion Week is the only serious business platform for professionals in the Indian fashion context. WIFW acts as a facilitator between the India designers with international and domestic media as well as buyers.

Wills Lifestyle India Fashion Week has been scaling new heights, edition after edition. There is great synergy in the association of our premium lifestyle brand Wills Lifestyle with the event and we look forward to further strengthening the strong and deep-rooted partnership that we have established with the fashion fraternity.

This is Asia's biggest B2B fashion and India's premiere fashion event with over 100 participating designers every edition and increasing number of buyers both domestic and international.

Designer-wear so far seen on the ramps and appreciated for its distinctive creative edge has been out of reach of consumers at large because of its limited distribution and inaccessible pricing. In the last quarter of 2006, this began to change with the roll-out of Wills Lifestyle India Fashion Week line that offers consumers across the country, designer-wear for their wardrobes.

This is the largest ever initiative in the Indian fashion industry to take designer wear to consumers, offers a choice of aspirational yet wearable designs at accessible price-points through a nationwide network of stores. It is a proposal that has been welcomed by consumers.

Wills Lifestyle partners with leading designers to create the grand finale collection of the Wills Lifestyle India Fashion Week and subsequently the collection is launched at its stores.

The first edition of exclusive Wills Lifestyle India Fashion Week line of pret and diffusion designer-wear featuring the creations of leading designers Rohit Gandhi-Rahul Khanna and Monisha Jaising, was launched in November 2006 called the Signature Line.

For the Indian designers, partnering with Wills Lifestyle is a win-win proposition. They are not restricted in reach to select patrons, but can leverage Wills Lifestyle's strong retail presence and access a much larger premium consumer base across the country. The designers stand to gain from Wills Lifestyle's deep understanding of the premium consumer's tastes and preferences in the pret fashion market.

We have received an enthusiastic response for the Signature line. This collection already constitutes about 15% of our sales. The Signature line has been welcomed by not just our existing consumers - close to 50% of purchases of designer wear at our stores have been by consumers who visited our stores the first time. Fashion awareness and aspiration with respect to designer wear now goes beyond the top 2 to 3 cities to such cities as Kolkata, Hyderabad, Pune, Ludhiana and Chandigarh.

Indian consumers are becoming more aware of fashion due to the international media and travel opportunities. They wish to express their individuality and are moving away from mere price benchmarks to aesthetics that provide differentiation and exclusivity. This is not just in the metros but also in other smaller cities.
Enthused by the overwhelming response, Wills Lifestyle plans to expand the initiative and is set to introduce more than 250 individual creations of pret and diffusion designer-wear on an annual basis. Consumers at Wills Lifestyle stores can access exclusive ensembles from designers like JJ Valaya, Rohit Gandhi-Rahul Khanna, Manish Arora, Rohit Bal, Shantanu & Nikhil, Rajesh Pratap Singh, Rina Dhaka and Ranna Gill.

Designer clothes had niche clientele; Wills Lifestyle's designer wear initiative is expanding that base. The Wills Lifestyle Signature line is for both men and women. Pricing is premium, yet accessible ranging from Rs 3000 to Rs 15000.

Wills Lifestyle is strongly established as an internationally competitive lifestyle brand with its premium imagery, vibrant product portfolio and world class shopping experience. We see this association as a natural one-a uniquely synergistic opportunity for the partners of the Wills Lifestyle India Fashion Week to create new benchmarks in the fashion & lifestyle space and gain global recognition.

The DEBUT-An initiative by Wills Lifestyle.
We have instituted a unique platform that is aimed at promoting young fashion talent called The Debut. This is in line with our commitment towards wider engagement with the fashion fraternity and promoting young & fresh talent.

The Debut, an annual event with support from Fashion Design Council of India launched in March 2007 aims to encourage students of fashion through showcasing, recognizing and rewarding outstanding talent.

This year, in the fourth edition of 'The Debut', over 320 students from leading fashion institutes like NIFT, NID, Pearl Academy of Fashion sent in their entries, out of which 45 were selected to showcase their designs in regional rounds held in Mumbai, Kolkata & Bangalore in front of eminent jury comprising of designers like Manoviraj Khosla, Anita Dongre, Priyadarshini Rao and Monapali in respective cities.

Fourteen finalists were selected for the finale round in Delhi, where talents across India competed for a sponsored trip to an international fashion destination and an opportunity to work with ITC Limited.

Through this platform, we provide an opportunity to the fresh talent to engage with the established designers and this initiative promises to make Indian Fashion a recognized name in the global arena.

The Debut has already added a new dimension to our engagement with various constituents of the fashion fraternity including designers, students of fashion and models. We are sure the initiative will go from strength to strength in the years to come.