JOIN USSimplicity is known to be one of the best kinds of fashion. Promoting this mantra is ‘FREECULTR’ the lifestyle brand for men and women’s wear. Launched in 2011, the brand was born out of the idea that ‘simplicity is everything.’
The brand creates customised tee-shirts for men and women, based on varied themes. Gone are the days where style, fashion, moods, desires, personality need to be prescribed and followed. One now feels free to develop and choose their path and their own style.
While they retail their brand online and through their retail stores, they recently announced the launch of a new digital crowdsourcing platform called FREECULTR Express. This platform allows anyone to create and sell customised products through their very own personalized tee-store featuring original digital content with a strong visual appeal.
Sandeep Singh, co-founder and CEO of FREECULTR, says, “The platform is for all those designers who beginners and are infused with the passion of designing and have great ideas. Without any investment and inventory, they can launch their own design to monetise their idea.”
The FREECULTR Express is also a platform, where all the designers get the opportunity to create their designs independently. Over a period of six months, they have been able to get as many 30,000 product designers, graphic designers, photographers, etc
on board.
“All the designers work as independent individuals. In a way, we give these designers the tool to market themselves on this platform,” says Singh adding that they also take some of the designs to their online market-place partners like Myntra, Flipkart, Amazon and Jabong.
Fashion as an industry, is popular to belong to only the big-wigs. We all know that to get into fashion a huge amount of initial investment is required. Until one gets established and enters the ‘famous’ parade of the fashion world, profits or returns are nearly negligible.In such a scenario, FREECULTR Express offers some budding designers, a one-of-a-kind opportunity. “Designers can simply upload their own designs under their own name, tag themselves and can launch them on the platform,” explains Singh.
“Also, we produce on demand. As soon as some order is placed on the website, we then take it forward for printing and see to it that the product is shipped in
24 hours.”
Meanwhile, they also come up with specific themes on events like Independence Day, Mothers’ Day, etc, where they ask the designers to design according to those themes in fashion. Currently, the theme ‘Indianism’ is on, where the designs include things which predominantly reflect what India is all about.
Alongside, FREECULTR Express engages with their designers through FREECULTR Master, where they constantly communicate with the designers, discuss their success stories and much more.
Aditya Seth, a 21 year-old Delhi-based designer with FREECULTR Express, tells Metrolife about his experiences so far.
“I dropped out my college after six months because I wasn’t happy with the syllabus of my course. So I’m just a grade 12th passed out and FREECULTR has helped me with my pocket money. I am now working on my own start-up and all the company’s paper work and formalities have been possible only because of this portal. The best part is that they are open to artistic ideas and promote the designers’ original designs,” says Seth.
He works part-time for the portal and spends three to four hours every day on creating designs based on tribal, musical and peace themes.
Starting from the minimal range of Rs 450, these tee-shirts are priced at the maximum amount of Rs 750, and are thus pocket friendly.
“Making our designs accessible, we avail the consumers with great designs that are entirely new and unique. One can look forward to something through which they can express their story, or something that are extremely passionate about. People come to us in search of something that they are interested in. They look forward to designs that exactly suit their personality and their choice,” Singh elucidates.
Expressing about the lack of such opportunities is Abhishek Bhardwaj who is working as a senior graphic designer with an e-commerce portal and also sells his designs on tee-shirts through FREECULTR Express.
He says, “I don’t think we have any such opportunity in India. On this portal I get the freedom of ideating and creating designs according to my own creativity. Moreover, it helps me earn extra money — without any expenditure — which is over and above my monthly salary.”