Strengths
Strategy: The primary reason for the success of Fab India is
its strategy where it turns the artisans across India into assets while
sharing profits amongst themselves. This has a multitude of
advantages. While it creates a livelihood for traditional craftsmen
who have left their skills for more promising jobs it also ensures
that city people have access to traditional crafts.
Traditional positioning: The Company positions itself as a seller
of original Indian handloom and this is sourced from original
craftsmen. The handloom is available in various products such as
clothes for men, women, and kids primarily in ethnic designs, bed
linen, home furnishings, and jewelry in traditional designs. The
brand also sells lamps, lights, stationery, home accessories, pottery,
and cutlery.
Customer Trust: FabIndia is a brand that enjoys a high level of
trust amongst customers. The products are made from pure
handloom which is woven and designed as well as created by
expert craftsmen from respective home markets. The products are
thus high quality and original and customers of Fab India are
highly brand loyal and hardly purchase from other companies.
Designs: FabIndia is a dealer of traditional handlooms and their
designs are original. Some of their popular prints such as block
prints, ikkat, kalmkari and pochampalli are ethnic on the origin and
made by people who have practiced these for many generations.
This makes their deigns nit just unique but original.
Good supplier relationships: The key strength of FabIndia is their
traditional craftsmen who belong to multiple villages across the
country. They are linked to more than 30,000 such artisans and the
company provides them trendy designs, network support, contacts
and trains them on technologies while also making necessary
investments for production. They get paid handsomely for their
skilled work.
The brand does not advertise much and strongly believes in word
of mouth marketing which has proved very effective till now
Some of the key weaknesses of FabIndia are:
Expensive: Fab India is a very expensive brand and their products
are highly priced in comparison to the other products on
the market. The company which is a not for profit organization
reinvests their profits back into the business. However, the high
costs often prevent the customers of all income groups from buying
FabIndia products.
Poor penetration in small towns: Though Fab India is an Indian
brand that specializes in ethnic and handloom wear, the company
has been hugely unsuccessful in penetrating into the smaller towns
of India. Most of their showrooms are located only in bigger cities.
Independent stores: Fab India does not sell through other retailers
but operates only through its series of independent stores. In order
to maintain the image of exclusivity the company also does not
depend on the wholesale business. This restricts their volumes a
lot.
Limited global penetration despite huge potential in NRI market
The brand is losing out on attracting new customers as it hugely
depends on repeat purchases
Opportunities in the SWOT analysis of Fab India
Focus on tradition: Indian handlooms are growing in prominence
not just in India and Asia but across the globe. The traditional
textiles of India are even being promoted by popular designers in
world fashion events and worn by celebrities in prestigious red
carpet events. This means that there is huge scope for FabIndia
products in the global market.
Also The brand needs to tap the potential of organic foods by
creating awareness about their merits.
The brand should focus on Geographic expansion in US and UK as it
has
huge Indian population.
THREATS
Competition: Fabindia faces strong competition from brands like
W, shoppers stop, Khadi Gramodyog. Unorganized local players
can also be a serious threat to the brand
State-owned cooperatives: Governments both at the center and
the state are trying to promote traditional arts and crafts and they
offer incentives to these craftsmen. These artisans thus prefer to
sell their crafts to the government (thoughincentives are lower).
3.Also Consumers tilt towards foreign brands in the lifestyle segment is a
potential threat to fabindia
Products:
Fabindia is known for its handmade clothing and ethnic wear made by
nearly 55,000 rural Indian craftsmen. Fabindia has a diverse portfolio
which includes authentic wide variety and designs of products
exclusively made in India. It caters to diverse section of society and it
includes women clothing and accessories, men clothing and accessories,
kids clothing, home decor including furniture, personal care products
and organic line of products. The differentiating factor in Fabindia's
products is that they all are handmade and thus support artisans all
across India. Fabindia focuses on quality and style of the product and has
maintained the same over the years.
Place:
Fabindia is present in over 250 retail outlets across India and is also
present in countries like Italy, UAE, Singapore and many more. It is trying
to increase its coverage to make sure that the products are available to
customer readily and easily or can be delivered to them from any place.
Fabindia also makes sale through its online web portal and company's
product are also available through other e-retail platforms such as:
Amazon, Flipkart, Myntra
Price:
Fab India uses product line pricing for its product wherein a base price is
set and these products are marketed to the high price elastic consumers
and higher quality products are marketed to less price elastic consumer
segment at a premium price charged over the base price. This process
used by Fabindia of separating goods into cost categories, is in order to
create various quality levels in the minds of consumers. This strategy has
helped the company to expand its reach in middle-class segment as well
as in attracting upper class segment.
Promotion:
Initially Fabindia relied on word-of-mouth as a method of promotion and
relied heavily on its loyal customers to spread the word. As the company
did not offer any discount or any bargain price and had fixed price for its
products, it had to change its marketing strategy. With change in time,
to make customers aware of its authenticity and genuineness it took to
print media to advertise its products through in-store posters, mobile
marketing and advertising. Fabindia also recognized the benefits of
social media platforms and adopted an online marketing strategy to
create awareness about the brand. Fabindia has put forth the
community in all its marketing campaigns to generate an emotional
connect with the people of India. These campaigns also revolve around
assuring high quality products which are handmade and organic.
Competitor Analysis
Competition faced by Fabindia is from both the organized and
unirganised retail sector. The unorganized sector has the local tailors and
local NGO who provide customized garments to the customers at
reasonable price. One of the regional competitor is the market outside the
law garden in Ahemdabad The law garden is a famous place for buying
handicrafts, ethnic wear and Gujarati outfits from local hawkers.
However, the scale of operations does not pose a major threat to Fabindia.
However a far great threat is possed by the organized sector especially
Khadi Gram Udyog outlets and Cottage Industries Emporiums across the
country. The product mix offered by both is similar to Fabindia. Also,
they have the backing of the governments. However, the quality of
products of and services provided and services provided by Fabindia is
perceived to be higher than that of the government. Fabindia’s main
competitors are the ethnic wear retailers like Khadder, W, who are also
expanding at rapid pace. W, For example has over 521 exclusive stores
now, in addition to being available at some multi brand outlets. There is
also severe competition from the ethnic wear labels from the modern
indian retail chains such as Shoppers Stop & Pantaloons. Stores like
Anokhi have the same target audience, but do not have the reach of
Fabindia
Brand equity Findings
So we conducted a small survey on Fab India and here are the findings
So the first one was which of the product category of fabindia are people
aware of. So the majority of the people that is 97.5 percent are aware
about the clothing category but not even 50 percent of the people were
aware about the other offerings of fabinida like furniture, food, beauty
home décor and so on.
Next was what comes to mind when they think of fabindia. So it can be
seen that majority of the people that is 77.5 % associate fabindia with
Indian ethnic wear.
The next was which brand do people prefer for indian clothing.
So it can be seen that majority of the people prefer shoppers stop with
35%, followed by Fabindia at the second place with 22.5%.
And the last was, what do people like the most about fabindia. So
majority of that people that is 52.5% like quality of fabindia the most
followed by designs which were liked by around 27.5% of the people.
So based on this, the following is recommended to fabindia.
Fabindia should promote their personal care, organic food, and home
furnishing product lines more by advertising or including them in the
display, in order to create awareness about those products. Coz as we saw
not aware about this product line by fabindia
Fabindia should penetrate deeper into international markets like USA
and UK. As there is huge Indian population, there will be good demand
for fabinida products in such markets. So they should capitalize on that.
