Who says that women’s career starts declining after marriage? It’s out-and- out a myth. Nidhi Yadav is one of those inspirational designers turned businesswoman who strikes an excellent balance between family and professional life.
Her marriage didn’t stop her from pursuing her dreams and her designer label AKS transit the attitude and confidence — powerful fusion dressing. The brand, which began as a start-up idea functioning on a dream to produce versatile ethnic garments for young women across the country has now emerged as a business catering to the highly competitive fashion industry.
Yadav, the founder and creative head of AKS, shared about the company’s idea of quirking up the ethnic fashion market with unique fusion themes. Excerpts:
Q. What does AKS stand for and how is it different from other main-stream clothing brands?
The brand was created with the idea of quirking up the ethnic fashion market with unique fusion themes that bespoke comfort satisfying the everyday need of the new woman.
Also, this includes fashion that suits the rapidly changing time and ensures both high-quality standards and pocket-friendly rates.
This is for all young ladies and girls from 18 to 35 years of age which includes students and working women. The brand offers a vast range of ethnic women’s wear, including kurta/kurtis, palazzo, ethnic sets, anarkalis, leggings, and mojri (traditional footwear).
The company is all about propagating a confident attitude through fusion dressing.
Q. How challenging was the responsibilities of simultaneously setting up a business and taking care of a baby?
Amongst all the obstacles faced, it was the responsibility of handling a seven-month-old baby, a small budget, and limited resources.
But, thanks to my very supportive family and the timely decision of tapping the business opportunities in the e-commerce sector, that AKS was able to succeed within a short span of time.
Q. How difficult was it to build a customer base and gain their trust?
The fashion industry runs on innovations and novel ideas. Despite tough competition, we could make a solid customer base because we were good at understanding their changing aspirations.
Efforts like capsule collections, quick replenishment models, and price controlling has helped us a lot in winning the trust of our customers.
Q. How do you ensure the quality of your garments?
We have a team of high calibre people who assiduously work to ensure continuous quality development to keep on delighting our customers.
From material procurement and product dispatch, we follow standardised quality instructions under the observance of quality officers.
Q. What are the factors that you keep in mind while designing a garment?
Designing is a continuous and ever-evolving process and we believe in creating beauty with fabric, prints, and designs.
We develop a theme and a story, and then select the fabric as per the requirement of the theme.
Theme finalisation depends very much on the lifestyle and demographic profile of the target audience, and we have to do all of this in successive stages.
Q.What kind of fabrics do you prefer working with?
I generally prefer working with pure cotton-rayon which is skin friendly. We hardly use any artificial fibers until and unless there is a real demand for the product.
Nothing is better than natural cotton as its softness increases after every wash.
Q. What are your future plans?
The brand is witnessing more than 100 per cent growth in terms of revenue, and recently, we bagged Myntra’s Best Emerging Brand Award for 2017.
We are looking forward to making AKS a complete women store in contemporary styles and to turn the same into a reality, we are all set to enhance the brand’s market penetration via MBOs and franchisees.
In-house manufacturing is also a top priority amongst our future strategies.