The fast fashion concept in India, led by big international brands, is relatively

new, but catching up fast. Brands are aiming at creating a trend for more
frequent shopping among Indians, who are culturally not accustomed to
changing their wardrobes often. Also, since most fast fashion derives its
inspiration from local and international trends, big brands around the world
hope Indians will become more experimental in their approach to fashion
clothing.

However, there’s a whole different story behind Cover Story. India’s

homegrown fashion brand wants to be a clear differentiator and aims to stand
out in this market as a first fast fashion women’s western wear brand which is
truly global.

Launched under the umbrella of Kishore Biyani’s Future Group, Cover

Story’s range is highly competitive in terms of prices as compared to top-notch
global brands. It brings feminine international designs, prints and styles to
stores with just the right amount of tweaking to suit Indian needs.

Cover Story has opened its first standalone store in Infiniti Mall in Malad
followed by a store in DLF Mall of India, Noida. Indiaretailing Bureau spoke
exclusively with Manjula Tiwari, who gave us the complete scoop…
Cover Story, a fast fashion brand by Kishore Biyani’s Future Style Lab, a wholly-
owned subsidiary of the Future Group, opened its first standalone store in
Infiniti mall in Malad, a suburb in Mumbai.

The 1,000 square feet store with rose gold fittings caters to 25-26-year-old
women’s western wear market with styles that are inspired by international
trends, catwalks and Instagram. Like the international fast fashion brands Zara
and H&M, Cover Story will be refreshing 10% of its collection every week by
adding new pieces and phasing out 10% as well.

Globally, fast fashion is the fastest growing segment in apparel and lifestyle
retail, made popular by brands like H&M and Zara that are known to continually
refresh their inventory and offer new collections to their consumers. For
instance, new stock arrives twice every week at Zara.

Now as these global brands gain acceptance and expand in India, Biyani, who is
known to continuously innovate and reinvent himself, is hoping to capture a
slice of this market.
“Our intention is to build stores that are as large as those of H&M and Zara,
right now the stores (Cover Story) are smaller,” Biyani had said in an interview
in April to Mint.
With Cover Story, the company has crunched the turnaround time from design
to store by 50%. “We are able to get the design in store within 60 days,” said
Manjula Tiwari, chief executive office, Future Style Lab, who joined the
company last year from fashion e-tailerJ abong.

Biyani has also managed to price the brand competitively with entry price
points at Rs.790, going up to Rs.4,000, or an average pricing of Rs.1,800.
The collection is manufactured across India, Korea and China as the company
looks at creating a global brand for the Indian market. “Our business promises
to deliver the latest trends while they are still latest,” said Tiwari, while
explaining that India does not manufacture all the fabric required to make an
international collection and therefore it has put in place a global sourcing and
supply chain.

The store comes with a selfie booth, or a large Android screen, which allows
consumers to browse through the collection, click pictures and even print the
picture or post it on social media sites like Facebook and share with friends on
WhatsApp.

Currently, the brand is available in close to a dozen shop-in-shop stores within

Central, a department retail chain from the fashion retail arm of the group,
Future Lifestyle Fashions Ltd. It will be available online from next month in 50
physical locations over the next 3-4 years. The brand will be available in cities
like Surat and Lucknow as well, said Tiwari, adding that pilot projects were
received well in cities like Patna where some of the latest fashion styles were
sold out immediately on launch.

To be sure, retailers across the board are upping the ante on fashion. “Earlier
we were talking of two seasons a year. We are now at 4-6 seasons a year and
will go to 6-8 seasons a year in the next 24 months. If a customer comes to our
store every 6-8 weeks they will see something new,” said Govind Shrikhande,
managing director, Shoppers Stop Ltd, in an interview in March to Mint, while
explaining that the merchandise mix from core versus fashion which was 50-50
is now 80:20, in which 80 is fashion.