Q&A with Twin Sister Entrepreneurs, Aanchal & Sanjana
Bubber Couture is an Indian Luxury Couture Label for men and women in South Mumbai. It is known for its unique aesthetic, exquisite craftsmanship and bespoke services. Bubber Couture is a one-stop shop for all Indian couture clothing, classic and tailored menswear and elegant and intricate womenswear.
The brand is known for its classic silhouettes, defined cuts, handcrafted luxurious fabrics and multi-functional garments. The men’s line is slick, subtle, and affordable, catering to the stylish yet minimalistic man. The women’s couture line is sophisticated and elegant, featuring an antique aesthetic blended with the contemporary.
Designers:
Bubber Couture was launched by identical twin couturiers Aanchal Bubber Mehta & Sanjana Bubber in 2011. Their clothing is a unique expression of the twins’ combined creative vision while their multi-functional clothing is a symbol of their contrasting yet similar natures.
Their goal at Bubber Couture is to provide affordable and impeccably designed luxurious Indian clothing world-wide.
Links
Website:www.bubbercouture.com
Facebook:www.facebook.com/bubbercouture/
Instagram:www.instagram.com/bubbercouture/
Twitter:www.twitter.com/bubbercouture/
1.What gets you out of bed in the morning i.e what’s your source of motivation?
Our job at Bubber Couture is an exciting and inspiring one. It is a day filled with colour, design and texture combined with meeting new clients from all over the globe on a daily basis. We expose ourselves to art, design, philosophy and history in our free time. These sources provide enough inspiration which helps us expand our creativity and band width as designers.
Everyday is a new day to find a new inspiration. Converting a vague concept in our minds to a wearable and tangible yet elegant product is a very exciting process. We choose a unique theme for every collection which sets our frame of mind for the next six months. We think, live and breathe our collection themes, so much so that most of our ideas come organically to us. It is an expression of both our combined accumulated visions that adds an extra special edge to our products.
There is a constant innovation and drive that we derive from sports that we use to fuel our work energy. We both are into kickboxing, marathon running, gymming and basketball. Sports has taught us to constantly persevere and to never give up. Sports also teaches you to push through days which are not panning out and to keep working consistently towards success. It is through these activities in our lives that we constantly challenge ourselves to innovate our products and provide more versatile and multifunctional clothing options to our customers which has become our unique selling point over the years.
2. Why should people choose your product/services?
Bubber Couture provides bespoke services for Indian wear for men and women. Our flagship store gives clients the opportunity to either buy off the rack or to customise garments with our designers as per their requirements. The minute a client walks into our store, we study their personalities and categorise our clients into style segments created by us. Based on the style segment a client falls into, we pitch designs and concepts suitable for their occasion, body type and skin tone whilst keeping their personality and requirements in mind. Our garments are an extension of our sense of style and design aesthetic. When we customise an outfit for a client we try and add a bit of their personality to their outfits.
We also specialise in curating head to toe looks for our grooms and brides. We style and curate complete looks from the headgear to footwear and choose colours that complement the couple’s outfits for the perfect harmony.
Our unique selling point is our multi-functional clothing line. Being identical twins that complement yet are different from each other, we have introduced the same philosophy to our clothing line. We like our garments to be two sided, reversible or with a multifunctional concept. We also pitch multifunctional styling concepts to our clients while choosing clothing so that they curate unique wardrobes from us which can be styled uniquely for multiple weddings, in order to always look stylish, unique and stand out from a crowd. We believe in giving the client as much versatility in look and function with each garment. We make reversible bandhis and kurtas, jackets that convert into bandhgalas in our multifunctional mens line. We specialise in Menswear, however we also have a huge range of womenswear to offer.
We create a lot of our own unique textiles, silhouettes and prints which you will never find in any other retail store in Mumbai. We also try and have fun within the interiors of our clothing especially in our minimal and subtle clothing line. Since our mens design line is catered to the minimal and classic man, we contrast our pieces with quirky and vibrant prints which adds a flippant festive vibe to a demure piece.
Fit and finishing is everything in designer clothing. A tastefully designed piece without great finishing or fit wouldn’t have any space in a couture clothing store. We make sure the quality of our products and finishing is to the highest skill along with a great fit or cut which would make our client look the best that he or she can.
We also have our own custom range of pocket squares and bow ties for men which are great accessories to gift or to oomph up a subtle look.
3. What’s your competitive advantage and why can’t it be copied?
Our service is definitely our competitive advantage and very hard to replicate. The minute detailed bespoke service we offer is not the same as the one offered in other stores. As we do on appointment, you are always meeting one of our head designers who can create and curate something exquisite for you on the spot.
Indian Bespoke services for well finished designer garments is extremely limited in India. Our main competitive advantage is our design. Minimal and classic menswear which is tastefully designed and multifunctional does not exist in Mumbai. It’s because of our eye detail and heavy editing skills by which we design our clothing, is what makes our designs stand out from others.
Our multifunctional clothing is also value for money. Our clients get additional value from the clothing and wear our clothes more than they wear any of their other mens clothing. The reversible nature of our products makes our clients get less bored of the design over time and the feedback we get is that our clients pretty much wear our clothes ‘to death’.
Also since we make some of our own prints and textiles, our clients get unique looks that they will not find anywhere else.
4. What risks are you facing?
Over stocking is one issue which all designers have to be careful of. Inventory blocks and cash flow and the two major key elements that we always need to carefully balance. Skilled labour is definitely hard to come by. We mainly hire passionate and creatively driven staff, whom are willing to learn and be trained.
Imitation is one major issue we face. We have faced other brands copying our designs. We have even had clients pretend to walk into the store to buy with their own customer, who have later copied our multifunctional construction and concepts as they clearly are not creative to enough to come on their own. However in a case like this, we warn the designer to be careful, as litigation costs a lot and unless you copyright each design, you have no case. It’s sad that other designers have to ‘steal’ our creativity and visions as they simply can’t come up with their own.
5. What are your cash flow projections? When will you break even? How much will you need in investments?
We broke even in our first year of business. However every year we need to reinvest money each year in 3-4 new collections to provide new designs to stock our store. The amount we invest depends from collection to collection. The more detailed collections cost more. Our Autumn/Winter collections are dressier and heavier as they are catered to weddings, they always cost more. While our Spring Summer Collection is usually less ethic, less costly and minimal in design.
At Bubber Couture we believe in organic growth at a slow and steady pace. We prefer to grow yearly at a level we can afford than to invest heavily. The market at the moment is extremely tricky, therefore all brands have to be tactful with investments and plan in a practical manner in order to survive in the market and do well.
6. What comes first for you money or emotions?
Emotions over money is definitely an easy pick. We work to live better and not to live to work. We balance our work, family, social life and sports.
One of us has a 2.5 month old baby, so taking care of our family is definitely more important over money. But at the same time, a lot of effort is put into our work. We make sure that our efforts reap results. For us, the growth of the brand is the most important thing. We want the brand to be eventually a world renowned couture fashion name associated with bespoke and menswear.
7. What are your strengths and weaknesses?
Coming from a background of art and design our strength is definitely a strong visual eye for colour, texture and form. We both are very creative and conceptual and derive our creativity from philosophy, mythology, psychology, art, architecture and history. This creates intellectual themes and concepts which intern translates to our unique clothing. We also get bored of concepts very fast, so we are always trying to constantly create new and off beat clothing solutions to clients who are always excited for what we come up in the next season.
One of our weaknesses would be that we are completely right brained. When we started our business, we both were very weak with numbers. However after running our business for 7 years we have learnt on the job. We have realised there is nothing you cannot achieve. With hard work and determination anything can be learned and conquered.
8. Tell me about an accomplishment you are most proud of.
Salman Khan’s stylist came into one of our exhibitions and bought a whole range of outfits. Not only did he wear those outfits, but he wore them while hosting ‘Bigg Boss’ on TV. That was extremely exciting. We have made outfits for Rohit Sharma, the cricketer as well. In fact we even made his engagement outfit and outfits for his family for his wedding. We have had famous people like Vivek Oberoi, Rajkumar Hirani, Shankar Mahadevan, Pritam etc. wear our clothing.
9. How do you handle pressure?
In the wedding season the pressure is always high. The first thing we try to do is to relax, take a deep breath and think of the different ways we can tackle any problems that come our way. Sometimes it takes time, but there is a way out of most problems if you are composed and rational.
Both of us run long distance and are part of a girls’ basketball league. Playing a sport really helps deal with the wedding season pressure.
10. If you sold your company today, what would be the tone of the conversation? What would you want to gain? What would you want to avoid losing?
It would be an open conversation trying to understand how the buyer would add to the brand. We would want to gain more funding to advertise, open more stores and advertise the brand ‘Bubber Couture’ being synonymous for well fitted subtle, stylish Indian-wear world wide. Also expanding our products to try and create a one stop shop for mens Indian-wear.
At ‘Bubber Couture’ we have a particular design aesthetic and a very informal way that we meet our clients. We need to make sure that the design aesthetic of ‘Bubber Couture’ stays intact and does not change with different management .
11. What advice would you give to someone starting out?
Be diligent, honest and hard working. Be open to other people’s ideas, trust your instinct always, it takes you a long way. If you have partners make sure they are on the same page as you and contribute as much as you do to the brand. Each partner should be bringing the best to the table. Developing a brand takes a lot of love, time and patience. Use time to change, build, grow and revamp every year. Be respectful to your employees as without them you will not have a firm. Also work as hard as you can. There is no replacement for hard work. Where work is lacked, it can be created.
Also most importantly create your own voice through your clothing. Plagiarism will get you nowhere in life. If you make the same products as a designer who has been around longer than you, why would clients come to you in the first place?
12. What is it like to work with your identical twin sister?
Working with an identical twin has it’s challenges but is extremely rewarding. Firstly, on sick days, our clients doesn’t miss one of us as they think they are meeting the same individual so that is a complete bonus. Apart from that, twins have a very unique bond. There is a deep level of trust and understanding for one another.
Even though we are different in our thinking and concepts, we are very similar in many ways. Our design label is only a success because of our combined design vision. We both are the two running legs of this brand and each bring a unique vision and flavour to the brand. Even though we both design equally, Aanchal is better with menswear concepts and accounting and managerial roles. She has a more controlled and systematic approach towards design. While Sanjana is the complete opposite. Sanjana is more eccentric and is our creative head. She handles the social media, public relations and all the creative ad conceptual themes ideas.
We love working with each other because we can read each others minds. Our design process is uncannily parallel with each other even though we are so different and unique. Every season the colour palates and vision we have for our upcoming collections is strangely almost always identical without communicating with each other. All our staff in our office is often shocked to see how without voicing an idea to each other, that we come up with the same common idea. It’s this bond and connection which extends into our clothing and which makes us and our brand special.
