Q] What was the insight behind the ‘No Strings Attached with Zivame’ campaign? Tell us a bit about the campaign.
Intimate wear in India is a category which has a certain societal taboo attached to it and a lot of women really hesitate, they feel a sense of embarrassment to discuss issues and products because they’re concerned when it comes to intimate wear. As a brand, right from inception, we are breaking societal taboos, encouraging conversations and making the whole intimate wear category a lot more mainstream for the consumer. While the issues were sensitive, we decided to deal with certain quirks and a touch of fun. Then the issue actually becomes a lot more relatable and consumers become comfortable. Hence, we decided that we will build this campaign - the series of videos under the stand-up comedy route, which highlights the issues that women face across different intimate wear categories, be it lingerie or shapewear.
Q] Since this is Zivame’s second film from the stand up series, what kind of response have you received so far?
It’s actually been overwhelmingly positive because the issues that we are talking about in each of these videos are issues that are very real for the consumer. There’s something that they have been struggling with and therefore they’ve been able to identify with the issues that we’ve highlighted and the whole approach itself, because it takes the route of comedy, it is very unique and differentiated to everybody else, not just in the intimate wear space but overall from a marketing space in India. Not many brands have actually gone this route. So, it’s a very unique, differentiated approach. It makes people take notice and even though the video isn’t over a minute, the kind of response seen is extremely positive. We’ve got comments, messages, not just from consumers that we have shared the video with, but even within our retail stores.
Q] Tell us a bit about Zivame’s collaboration with Prashasti Singh. How are you planning to leverage this association with stand-up artists in future?
This is a series of films that we intend to do, and there are two that we have already released. The first one, of course, was the film that we did with Aishwarya Mohanraj that talked about challenges and embarrassment that women face because their bra outline becomes visible and therefore the kind of clothes they want to wear get restricted. Our second film is with Prashasti. So we in fact intend to collaborate with different stand-up artists because each of these comedians have a certain personality and flair that they bring on board. And we want to kind of reach out to different sets of audiences by using different comedians. So we have done these two with Prashasti and Aishwarya, we have a couple more lined up. We look to collaborate with a lot more stand-up artists in the future, and not necessarily stick only to Aishwarya and Prashasti, while we might want to work with them again. We are not looking at a series only with one stand-up comedian. We want to use the comedy style of different artists.
Q] Due to the pandemic and social distancing norms, online shopping has accelerated like never before. How did it impact Zivame’s sales and what kind of growth have you seen in the revenues for your brand last year?
So what happened is that immediately after the lockdown was over, a lot of the loyal Zivame consumer base came back in a big way. And we saw amazing demand coming in from tier II and III markets. And we also acquired a lot of new users over the last few months, from tier I markets but also significantly from tier II and III markets. What we realised is that the brand value proposition in today’s times is extremely relevant for the consumer. It fulfils their needs and it does that adequately. And the brand has really been able to connect and therefore, because of the right sizing, the right benefit proposition, we’ve seen significant uptake across most of our categories. And at this point in time, the performance of the entire portfolio of intimate wear has been extremely positive.
Q] Zivame currently has over 58 retail stores and a strong presence in partner stores across the country. What kind of expansion do you expect to achieve by the end of this year? Are you also looking to expand in the tier II and III markets, considering the growing demand?
Actually, the number of stores that we currently have stands at 58 and we have aggressively scaled up when it comes to retail over the last 3-4 months. Of these 58 stores, 10 stores have actually opened in the last 3-4 months. So it’s very indicative of the potential of Zivame as a brand with the expansion that has happened in the current situation. We’re looking at actually closing the financial year at 75 plus stores and hopefully, doubling the number in the next year. In non-metros, we choose the location of the stores depending on where we need to meet the consumer demand. So while I may not be able to comment on which non-metros but yes, we will expand in the right places for sure in the coming year.
