The Pant Project

Another weekend, another store opening 😊 Store #5 is live at M5 Ecity Mall Bengaluru! With a curved glass facade, immaculate interiors and in a prime Electronic City catchment, I've got high hopes for this one!!

Can I speak to someone who can actually solve my problem? 😡That's a common customer care complaint across D2C retail, where frustrated customers ask service reps to escalate to a manager who can actually do something about their problem. I've recently seen CEOs take different approaches to customer complaints, and just wanted to share a little bit about how we think about customer service at The Pant Project... First Touch Resolution: It's frustrating for customers to be bounced from one internal department to another without resolution, so we try to max out on first touch solutions. E.g., unhappy with fit of your pants, fill alterations form and have pants picked up for alteration within 24-48 hours. The longer an issue lingers, the more a customers frustration grows. Try to solve as fast & directly as possible. Don't penalise the 99% for the 1%: India is unfortunately a low trust economy and some customers do try to cheat brands by unfairly returning used products etc. We try to make rules for the 99% honest customers, and might miss catching a few fraudsters in the process, but we believe it's unfair to penalise the mass loyal base of your audience for the few that look for loopholes in how to abuse customer care policies. Empathy, education and expertise: We train our service teams to truly empathise with a customer complaint (put yourself in the customers shoes), and to educate them about our brand (lack of awareness is often a cause of complaints e.g., I didn't know you take 10 days to deliver custom pants) as well as demonstrate expertise in your category (help customers understand more about the right fit and style for their body type), these principles go a long way in building trust for the long term. The real problem is that too many companies view customer service as a cost centre. It's actually one of the biggest pillars of your experience. While we try to embody best in class service, I'm sure some of you would still have had unsatisfactory service experiences. We try to learn from each mistake and improve every day.

Made in India 🇮🇳 is a great advantage, while China, Vietnam, Sri Lanka and Bangladesh may have their place in global fabric and garment manufacturing supply chains, my belief is that there is no better way for Indian brands to grow than to Make in India, for India. What are the advantages of a purely local supply chain? 1. Less Geopolitical Risk - with all that’s happening in the world, specially last year in Sri Lanka, and currently in Bangladesh, global supply chains are in for a shock. Being Made in India, Sold in India insulates us from some of these shocks. Granted, within India, from time to time, you can face supply chain disruptions in some states, so it’s best to have a Pan-India supply chain, avoiding a single point of failure. At The Pant Project we produce across Gujarat, Rajasthan, Maharashtra, Daman & Diu, Punjab, Tamil Nadu, and Karnataka. 2. Speed to Market - when you manufacture closer to point of sale, you are able to be more nimble in replenishment orders and shorter lead times help you. When you deal with imports (e.g., from China), you have lead times of 3-4 months and that blocks unnecessary cash in working capital, and elongates your order to replenishment cycle. Fabric on the floor at various factories in India, make garments in 30-45 days lead time is the ideal model. 3. Better for Environment - producing locally lowers your carbon footprint as a brand, and while Indian consumers may not be willing to pay for this in the short run, in the long run I firmly believe it will be a must have to be as eco-friendly as you can be as a brand. 4. Employment Generation - textiles is one of the oldest industries in the world, and employs over 4.5 crore (45 million) people in India. So by making locally, if we can contribute even slightly to this economy, we’re happy to play our part! If we go back to Gandhian philosophy, produce and consume locally is how our apparel industry always worked. The charkha (spinning wheel) was a household item, and local tailors were how most garments were stitched. At The Pant Project, while we’re trying to modernize the way people shop for their pants using the Internet, and while we use the latest precision technology to enhance our production processes, we are very much old school in our beliefs of being vocal for local manufacturing! Happy Independence Day, Jai Hind!

What does it mean to be an authority in a category? 1. Thought leadership - you stop looking at what others in your category are doing as a reference point, and innovate from first principles based on what you want to do for your customer, trying to achieve what’s never been done before. You’re not trying to be like A, B, C, you are trying to be the one and only. Tesla is the best example here of leading the way for electric vehicle development. 2. Product leadership - you push the boundaries of what’s possible in your category i.e fabric tech, fit and design innovation for us. Apple is the best example here of doing few things so exceedingly well that it’s products redefine markets (the iPod in 2001, iPhone in 2007, iPad in 2010) 3. Service leadership - your teams have an inherently customer obsessed service culture, and a unique set of ways of servicing customers for delight. Your companies sole definition of winning is consistently making the customer over joyed. The North Star for everyone in the company is “how happy are my customers with every purchase” and the natural consequence is that customers keep coming back for more. Amazon has been a true leader here with customer first initiatives like Prime membership, same day delivery, one click checkout etc. The hard truth is that you only become a Pro by putting in the hard work, over many years, and improving over many tiny iterations. Taking a sports analogy, Federer only became who he did by hitting 1000s of tennis balls a day, and perfecting his form + fitness + mental game. So I tell my team in our weekly team backs, it’s not easy to become #1, and harder to stay #1, but that’s where the fun is at. Doing what seems impossible (whether you succeed or not), makes for a life well lived…

Store #3 opening today! A location very to close to where I grew up, walking distance from my parents house. Glad to be opening up in our neighbourhood, and look forward to having you all visit. Address: Ground Floor, Kohinoor Building, 29, N S Patkar Marg (Hughes Road), Babulnath, Tardeo, Mumbai, Maharashtra 400007 Store timings: 11am to 9pm, every day

3 years in a row, featured on Inc42 Media's list of fastest growing D2C Brands in India. This time at #5. Highlights: The Pant Project clocked a 112% jump in revenue in FY23, and true to the D2C model, 75% of its net revenue came from its website sales and the rest from e-commerce marketplaces. It also entered offline retail by opening two outlets in Mumbai and Bengaluru in January 2024.  We're honoured to be amongst illustrious company on the list, and thankful to our team for their dedication and hard work, and to our customers for their trust. We're only getting started, there's a long way to go. 🚀

Opening today, The Pant Project store #2. This time in Bangalore! Location: Jayanagar 4th Block, 9th main. Right opposite Wildcraft & Bata, near Peter England, Van Heusen Intimates and Lenskart. Timings: 11am to 9pm daily What to expect: Men’s & Women’s custom made pants and ready to wear collection for all occasions. Formals, power stretch, cotton chinos, wools, linens, cargos, jeans, joggers, shorts and more. 250+ SKUs of bottomwear! Do we have a tailor in store? Yes. You can try on sample pants and get measured. We also we do free alterations with a quick turnaround. Pricing: Our pants start at 2,990 and we’re running some exciting offers for the store launch. Wait, what, 2 stores in a month. How? We simply mined our digital customer base zip data and saw we have 2000+ customers within 5km of this location. We already opened in Mumbai (our hometown and largest city by sales), and it was time to hit up Bangalore (our #2 city by sales). We did this one in partnership with LiteStore, a flexi retailing company that helps digital native brands go offline. Thanks Tarun S. Puneet Dinesh & team, you have been phenomenal partners and built the most luxurious, clean layout we could have asked for! So stop by, check it out and say hello! Udit Toshniwal and I will be at the store today & tomorrow (20th & 21st Jan) for the opening weekend 😃🙌

As an online brand, you learn so much in just a few days of going offline and interacting face to face with customers. Our first store launched on 5th Jan and I think I've learned more in these few days than I had in years of being digital only as a brand. When you go offline you realise the importance of: 1. Brand story - the reason you exist and the reason customer should give you a try needs to be crystal clear. We're fortunate that our digital advertising over the past 3 years has led to at least some recall in customers minds that the people who have walked in had largely seen us on Instagram, FB or Youtube before, and had an idea of what we did. 2. Visual Merchandising - the look and feel of the store is critical, first impressions matter 100x more offline. We've tried to keep the aesthetic as clean and simple as possible, too much information and overcrowding the store with too much product can lead to overwhelming a customer and cause decision fatigue. 3. Service mindset - the training of store staff to inculcate an "Atithi Devo Bhava" (Guest is God) and the knowledgeableness of the sales persons about our product & brand is essential in delivering an A+ customer experience. 4. Location Location Location - We chose this location based on our analysis of our online orders. This was a zip code that had 1% of our online orders within 5km of the store. We chose to go high street for our first store, and since we are not in a mall where footfall is guaranteed, we have to do some work to put the word out there and drive walk-ins. Each style of store in unique and there's different criteria (rent vs. sales per square foot) that has to be considered when opening, but the layout of the store & the location is a critical factor in success. 5. Digital x Physical Integration - the seamless integration of tech to allow offline customers to touch and feel product, yet place orders online (through their phone, tablet or laptop) is the goal of these experience centres. We've had customers come in to see different fabrics, to try on for size, to get measured and to see the different style options, and then create an account and order online from the store (so they can repeat seamlessly from home). That's a wrap on initial learnings from being offline for just a few days!