Have you ever looked at a piece of cloth and wondered why does it cost what it costs? While shopping for clothes one often comes across various brands and end up comparing the prices of similar products that are priced differently. Last month we got a chance to visit one of the largest garment export houses in India – the Orient Craft Limited Gurgaon, courtesy an upcoming fashion brand Postfold.
At this exclusive tour of the factory, Ashish Gurnani and Aashray Thatai, co-founders of Postfold, gave us an insight of how a piece of fabric goes through various testing, designing and cutting processes before it reaches the stores. As the story of clothes unfolded in front of us step-by-step we couldn’t help but marvel how these smaller units of manufacturing play such important role in creating a bigger picture in global fashion scenario.
We started our tour with the design unit where stitched clothes were given a final touch with sequins, embroidery and other kinds of embellishments. While everyone was busy accentuating the garments with motifs and sequins, we were surprised at the speed and skill of these meticulous workers as they churned out complete pieces in no time with finishing as good as machines.
The next department was the manual test unit, where the actual journey of apparel begins. It was here that the masked workers opened and check each textile stash for defects and sent the chosen ones for testing.
At the testing lab, the selected stash was tested for UV rays, acidic and alkaline nature, water and colour reactions and other important factors that decide the quality of fabric. After undergoing through all these tests, the fabric finally reaches the cutting and stitching units, where it gets the final shape and size. It is then re-tested for defects and the final products are then packed, sealed and delivered to the stores. This entire tour gave us a very clear picture of why good clothing brands always emphasize on the fact that their products are thoroughly tested and hence priced accordingly.
While speaking to us about the brand Postfold, co-founder of the brand Ashish Gurnani, mentioned, “PostFold is an online men’s and women’s apparel brand that started in November 2015 under the guidance of Mr. Anoop Thatai (CEO & Joint Managing Director at Orient Craft) and Mr. CP Gurnani (MD and CEO of Tech Mahindra). We wanted to start a brand that provided high quality apparel for affordable prices by eliminating the middlemen from each step of the product development. The idea was to find a balance between pricing and quality keeping in tune with modern trends.”
Whereas, Aashray Thatai, the other co-founder of the brand, added that India is one of the biggest manufacturers to the best brands in the world, yet finding high quality and great looking apparel is a task. He mentions how the idea of starting this brand was conceptualized. “We wanted to make something that could be worn from ‘desk to dinner’. We always face problems in finding clothes that would work post office, so we came up with a brand where the clothes were so versatile. The pricing was a very important factor for us and yet we didn’t want to compromise of the quality, so keeping these factors in mind we started the brand.”
So, if high fashion is on your mind without pocket pinching prices then we would surely recommend you to check out the online store of Postfold and pick something that you can wear from morning to evening without any worries about style.
~JB