First, a quick introduction:
No Nasties is an ethical clothing brand. We want Indian consumers to support Indian farmers, and to buy more organic fairtrade cotton clothes to help stop the spate of farmer suicides in the country (one every half hour – it’s shocking!). We want to make fantastic products in a sustainable and eco-friendly way. Win for the consumer & the brand, win for the planet and big win for the farmers.
I’m sharing some thoughts of our 3 year journey and also about our upcoming plans (for which we could use some support from you).
The Highs:
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- Being India’s first company committed to organic & fairtrade clothes meant we got a lot of attention, a lot of press. Feels good to be acknowledged for our passion & purpose.
- People love our products and want more. Alok’s words when he got his first No Nasties t-shirt: “You’ve got it!”.
- I love what we do! The company is a close reflection of my personal values and that’s a great feeling.
The Lessons:
- Building a brand that people LOVE is essential. Gain trust through our transparency, gain respect through our purpose, gain fans through our products. It’s a 24×7 job too!
- Supply chain in the garment industry in India is a pain. We’ve lost millions because of factory delays & quality issues. Need to have multiple vendors.
- The t-shirt business is all about inventory management and cash flow. Competition is always at your heels and margins keep shrinking. It’s tough.
What’s going on with No Nasties now?
We’ve had a tough year. It started with lots of promise – we had a great sales pipeline and had switched production to a huge, cutting edge factory. But the factory quality was not at par with our standards and we rejected 2 entire collections and lost most of our large clients too. It sucked. We were almost out of cash and needed me to put in a lot of personal funds to keep going.
But it also gave us time to reflect on what we really want to do as a brand – which is be more consumer facing and more about the ethical, sustainable movement. Not be just a t-shirt vendor for other brands but actually make clothes we love ourselves. Expand from t-shirts to a bigger clothing line – because that’s what our customers were asking for and because it’s what we always wanted to do too.
So here it is. The new No Nasties.
Dresses, polos, tank tops, tees & a lot more coming soon.
This is a big (& expensive) leap for us and we need to make sure this is a huge hit. We’re crowd-funding our way to success and have launched our “Give us a Kick” campaign for it. But it’s a different kind of crowd-funding campaign – instead of asking for donations, we are asking for commitments to buy our products, by way of gift-cards. And these gift-cards are valid for life; they don’t have a “valid till” date 🙂
Take a look at our campaign and tell me what you think: It runs only till Sept. 30th. Give us a Kick!
And if you like it, do support us + spread the word too!
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UPDATE
Nov 7th, 2014
What a Kick!
The response to our crowd-funding campaign was great and successful! Thank you!
We raised enough money to kick off this collection and have since re-launched our website with a brand new design. Take a look – www.nonasties.in – and let us know what you think!
Some learnings from the crowd-funding exercise:
1. What worked for us in the campaign the most was reaching out to individuals directly and re-engaging our customers who hadn’t heard from us in a while. Personal, honest emails always solicited a warm response and support for the brand.
2. Posting on community forums (like this), blogs, and social media is helpful in creating a “surround-sound”, multiple loudspeakers kind of buzz, as opposed to a single large push on a single medium. I think we got the most volume of visitors from these forums.
3. Key Influencers made all the difference. About 40% of our funding came from a handful of key individuals either directly from their purchase of our gift cards or through their friends & family (thanks, Asha!).
I’m happy to share more details about our campaign if you’re interested. You can write me here or directly at apurva@nonasties.in.
Thanks once again – love being part of this community!
/Apurva
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Amit Shroff
Apurva, I have heard about your store earlier from a cousin of mine, he mentioned that you guys have great product and is 100% organic.
Pawan Naulakha
Hi Apurva,
Good to read the post and good to acknowledge that we belong to the same trading line. The only difference being you sell it online and we do it offline.
What baffles me is that your stats suggests that you use up 1 kg of cotton / T-shirt now that is something to really worry about. On an average a Kg of raw cotton can be used to make unto 700-800 gms of knitted cloth. Moreover only 250-300gms of this knitted cloth is used to make a standard round neck T-shirt of standard 180-190GSM. No matter how much you waste you will be able to manufacture approx. 8 T-shirts in 3 kg of cotton.
The reason why I suggest this is that there is lot of scope of decreasing the wastage, if any, cutting down the input cost and earning more revenue on your already existing established network. While you do more of your online sales we can help you in the back-end by supplying classic polo’s as per your requirement.
Woao that’s a cracker of a business pitch. Ha ha..
Or in more simple words you can outsource your work to us – we can bring down the cost of manufacturing to astounded lower levels.
Will be nice to feel connected at:-
pawannaulakha@gmail.com
NIkul Sharma
Hello Apurv,
It gives a Feel Good kindaa feeling to be a user of your products. I am sure all others who buy from you too resonate more on the angel like deeds than other things Tees are sold for.
Just a quick question about your Sales strategy for Online Indian customers, What is Indian customers mentality about buying a 700 Rs. Tee that’s not a recognized brand? What makes them buy an Organic Tee (apart form feel good) against a Rs. 399 Graphic tee from any other cool company?
asha chaudhry
nikul,
let me answer this as someone who wears no nasties tees and also patronises benetton tees.
no nasties tees (from pure consumer point of view) are:
i) made of the softest cotton
ii) have unique cuts (especially for women) – a woman doesn’t feel like she’s wearing a tent.
– the sleeves fit perfectly; the shoulder lines don’t droop.
iii) DO NOT LOSE SHAPE!
a no nasties tee is not just another tee. ask anyone who’s worn one.
ps: you can always buy their tees when they are on sale. trust me, it’s worth it at rs 700 and is a steal when on sale!
NIkul Sharma
Hello Asha,
Thanks a lot for your reply. I am delighted to know a women’s perspective for a Tee a user base usually ignored. I myself am a fan of 100% cotton tee from No Nasties and other brands. even FreeCulltr’s Cotton tee are so soft to fall in love for the sheer comfort of such brilliant stuff hugging you.
Thanks!
Sudeepta Sanyal
Awesome this is Apurva. This takes guts and the right attitude to pull something like this off. Im sure No Nasties will have a great year ahead! Your brand is
asha chaudhry
apu,
i just kicked you hard :)))
feedback – your gift coupon was emailed to me in seconds – no glitch – nothing.
everything was smooth…. looking fwd to the new clothing line!!
KICK ASS!!!
🙂
Apurva Kothari
thanks, Amit! Great to know that people are talking about us. This movement only works if people are involved!:)
Apurva Kothari
hey Pawan
Thanks for the feedback. I’ll share the cotton usage calculations with you separately – I have a spreadsheet somewhere – but I know our numbers are right. We don’t have high wastage.
Would love to hear more about what products you can offer. Biggest question is if you’re organic & fairtrade certified (GOTS + FLO)?
Cheers,
Apurva
Apurva Kothari
Thanks for the feedback, Nikul.
In India, you get tees from Rs.199 to Rs.1999 – depends on the brand & quality. We are positioned in the middle for our price point but towards the top for our quality & fits. The amount of effort that goes into each t-shirt fit & cut is incredible. Plus, we do pay premiums for organic & fairtrade certified cotton. The market is big enough for us in this position – people appreciate the product a lot and most of our customers are repeat customers.
To be honest, our fight as a company is also against brands that offer super cheap tees. They cost cut all across the supply chain, and it’s usually the farmers & factory workers that get squeezed, and they compromise on social & environmental factors. The problem starts there and we hope to change it by showing consumers the “real cost” of such products. It’ll take time, but it’s happening! (Join in!)
Apurva Kothari
thanks, Sudeepta!!
Apurva Kothari
woohoo!! thanks, Asha!
Need more people to give us a kick! Do it soon – last few days!
http://www.nonasties.in/kickstart
Apurva Kothari
hey everyone, we had a successful and fun campaign and thank you all for the kick! It worked!
Our new collection and our new website is now live – see http://www.nonasties.in.
Would love to have your thoughts on the direction we’re taking. If you can spare a minute, tell me ONE THING that you’d like to see us improve. This kind of feedback is the most helpful for us!
Thanks.
-Apurva
asha chaudhry
hey thanks for sharing the crowdfunding learnings apu…. this is one area a lot of us are pretty clueless about!
ps: the new line looks really awesome. ordering that oxford blue dress as soon as i shed my diwali excess baggage :))))))
asha chaudhry
hey congrats on turning 5 apu, shweta and the no nasties team!! so so proud of you!!
more power to what you do!