Online apparel brand Campus Sutra plans offline stores

Bengaluru-based youth apparel brand Campus Sutra plans to open offline stores soon. Founded in 2013, the online and on-trend fashion brand for the youth, which grows at 300%, will launch small format retail outlets near colleges, targeting the youth.

“We will first launch two or three stores in June or July, and see how the model works before opening more stores. Each store will be set up over 250-300 sq feet of space, with an investment of around Rs 12 lakh,” Campus Sutra Co-founder Dhiraj Agarwal said.

Started by sister-duo Khushboo and Sonal, it was later transformed to Campus Sutra, when Dhiraj, Khusboo’s husband, and their brother Aditya quit their jobs and joined the startup.

Campus Sutra designs apparel and accessories that on-campus youngsters can identify with. If offers stream-based T-shirts, sweatshirts, bags, mugs and backpacks, among others. With a total strength of 80 employees, the bootstrapped brand works with eight captive units.

“Our core is supply-chain, and we churn out products faster and bring them to the market soon,” he said.

The brand considers back-end metrics like inventory turnover ratio, sell-through rate, and time-to-market as key to its business. Its sell-through rates are above 95%. When asked as to which city gets good response for Campus Sutra products, he said, “Lot of our products, including winter-wear, get maximum sales from the Northeast region. On average, we get around 6,000 orders a day, and we broke even in the seventh month of our operations.”

“We are on track to reach revenues of Rs 100 crore this fiscal year, and our aim is to make Campus Sutra a $100-million brand by 2020,” said Agarwal. Apart from Campus Sutra, it also owns kidswear brand called Instafab, and is also planning to launch ethnic formal-wear under a different brand name.