Fabindia

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Fabindia

Type Private/Community owned

Industry Textiles, Home furnishings, handloom apparel,

jewellery

Successor William Bissell

(Managing Director, 1993 - )

Founded 1960

Founder(s) John Bissell

Headquarters New Delhi, India

Revenue $65 million (2008)[1]

Website www.fabindia.com

Fabindia (or Fabindia Overseas Pvt. Ltd.) is an Indian chain store retailing garments,

furnishings, fabrics and ethnic products handmade by craftsmen across rural India. Established
in 1960 by John Bissell, an American working for the Ford Foundation, New Delhi, Fabindia
started out exporting home furnishings, before stepping into domestic retail in 1976, when it
opened its first Fabindia retail store in Greater Kailash, New Delhi. Today it has over 135 stores
across India and abroad, and is managed by his son, William Bissell. In 2008, Fabindia had a
revenue of $65 million, marking an increase of 30% from the previous year.[1] Fabindia sources
its product from across India through 17 Community-Owned-Companies; a certain percentage
of the shares of which are held by Artisans and Craftpersons.[1]
The products of Fabindia are mainly sourced from villages helping to provide and sustain rural
employment in India. They are currently produced by over 40,000 artisans and craftsmen across
India. The hand crafted products also encourage good craftsmanship.[2]

Contents
 [hide]

1 History
2 Philanthropy
3 Awards &
recognition
4 Further reading
5 Notes
6 External links

[edit]History

Fabindia was first started as a one-man export company of home furnishings, by John Bissell in
1960, in the two small rooms adjoining his bedroom in his Golf Links flat, as "Fabindia Inc.", as it
was incorporated in Canton, Connecticut. He used his recently deceased grandmother's
$20,000 legacy as start-up capital. [2] Originally from Hartford, Connecticut, where his
grandfather was the president of the Hartford Fire & Life Insurance Company [3], Bissell, was
previously working as a buyer for Macy's, New York left his position and came to India in 1958,
as a consultant for the Ford Foundation to advise the Government of India run Central Cottage
Industries Corporation. He was given a two-year grant to instruct Indian villagers in making
goods for export. He firmly believed in the emerging Indian textile industry and was determined
to showcase Indian handloom textiles with a way to provide employment to traditional artisans.
In 1964, Bissel met British designer Terence Conran, whose newly established home furnishing
retail company Habitat, soon became one of their biggest customers. Meanwhile it also
established a distribution network in the U.S., supplying their products to mom-and-pop stores.
Through early years Bissell travelled across craft-based villages and town meeting weavers and
entrepreneurs, swatches who would produce flat weaves, pale colors and precise weights in
handloom yardage, in the end he homed in on one supplier, A. S. Khera, a dhurrie and home
furnishing manufacturer in Panipat, thus by 1965 it had a turnover of Rs. 20 lakhs, though for
the first time it moved into a proper office. [4][2]

The year 1976, saw major equity restructuring within the company, as adhering to Reserve
Bank of India's rules instructing foreign companies to limit their foreign equity to 40 percent,
Fabindia offered its shares to close family members, associates, and suppliers like Madhukar
Khera, an early supplier to the company. This was also the height of the Indian Emergency
period(1975-1976), and the rule which barred commercial establishments to run from residential
properties was implemented, the company were forced out of its second premises, a house on
the Mathura Road. This prompted it to open the first Fabindia retail store in Greater Kailash, N-
Block market in New Delhi, in 1976, which remains its register office.[2][5][3]

Now catering to the urban India as well, in the coming decade Fabindia differentiated itself from
other government-owned and often subsidized players, in handloom fabrics and apparel sector,
like KVIC and various state emporiums by adapting its fabrics and designs to urban taste. For
this designers were accessed to modernize its line of home linens and most importantly
introduced a range of ready-to-wear garments, including churidar-kurta suits for women, men's
shirts etc. Even today, its team of designers provide most of the designs and colors, executed
by village-based artisans. At the other end, these artisans learnt the basics of quality,
consistency and finish, for instance avoiding frayed edges on handwoven shawls. The result
was that traditional apparel and products became mainstream, and fashionable, fast adapted by
a growing middle-class and became identified as the brand for the elite and intellectual as well
as affordable ethnic chic. [6][2][7]

Fabindia lost its biggest customer Habitat in 1992, when the latter was bought by Ikea, which
then decided to appoint its own buying agent in India; in the following year John Bissell suffered
a stroke, and his son William, gradually stepped into the helm of affairs, taking over completely
after the death of father in 1998, at age 66.[3] Till then William, an undergrad fromWesleyan
University had spent several years in Jodhpur, since completing his education in 1988. William,
working with rural artisans and crafts co-operatives across Rajasthan, was instrumental in the
setting up of various weavers' cooperatives. One of first tasks taken up by William was shifting
Fabindia's focus to the domestic market, enroute to becoming a retail chain, for till then it only
had two stores in Delhi. In time Fabindia’s retail business overtook its exports.[8][6]

Over the next two decades Fabindia, emerged as a successful retail business in India, with 111
retail outlets within the country and 6 abroad.[9][8] Fabindia added its non-textile range in 2000,
organic foods in 2004, followed by personal care products in 2006, finally it launched its range
of Handcrafted jewellery in 2008. [10] Fabindia sells a variety of products ranging from textiles,
garments, stationery, furniture, home accessories, ceramics, organic foods, and bodycare
products, besides exporting home furnishings. [2][11] Fabindia's retail expansion plans started
taking shape 2004 onwards, it opened multiple and larger stores in metros like Mumbai,
Chennai and Delhi, while at the same time spreading out beyond metros. It opened stores in
cities like Vadodara, Dehradun, Coimbatore and Bhubaneswar, soon as revenues also grew
from Rs 89 crore in 2004-05 to Rs 129 crore in 2005-06, reaching Rs 200 crore in 2007, in the
year when it sourced its products from 22,000 artisans in 21 states.[6]

Usually, the village-based artisan gets barely 5% of the tag price of their products as the rest is
taken away by the middlemen. To counter this, Fabindia introduced an artisan-shareholder
system through "supply-region companies" incorporated as subsidiaries. Here the craftsmen
collectively own 26% of the equity in each company, based in nationwide centres, with Artisans
Micro Finance, a Fabindia arm holding 49%, and employees and other private investors holding
the balance. [1] Also as part its expansion plans, 6% in Fabindia was sold in 2007, at an
estimated $11 million, to Wolfensohn Capital Partners, a private equity firm founded by
former World Bank president James Wolfensohn. [8] In 2009, it acquired a 25% stake in UK
based £ 30 million ethnic womenswear retailer, EAST.[12] Today the company has retail outlets
in all major cities of India - 131 at last count - in addition to international stores in Dubai, UAE; 3
stores in Bahrain; Doha, State of Qatar; Rome, Italy and one in Guangzhou, China. [12][13]

[edit]Philanthropy

William and John Bissell established "The Fabindia School" in 1992 in Bali, in Pali district of
Rajasthan, today it is co-educational, senior secondary school with 600 students including 40%
girls. The school subsidized tuition fees of the girl students and offers them scholarships, in
partnership with "The John Bissell Scholars Fund", established in 2000.[14]

[edit]Awards & recognition

Fabindia was awarded “Best Retail Brand” in 2004 by The Economic Times. In 2004, Fabindia
was featured as part of a CNBC special TV report on India. Fabindia brand does not advertise,
and largely works through word of mouth publicity[15], then in 2007 the craft-conscious enterprise
concept of Fabindia became a Harvard Business School (HBS) case study.[16] 2010 marked 50
years of the foundation of Fabindia, and release of the book, The Fabric of Our Lives: The Story
of Fabindia, by Radhika Singh.[17]