The husband-wife duo of Mayank Gupta and Anuja Gupta opened Apartment 9, an avant garde interior design store, to follow their vision of design-led manufacturing and innovation. “The store literally came about overnight. We started small with our first store in New Delhi. In nine years we’ve gradually expanded to six retail stores across the country, with the seventh now in Bangalore,” says Anuja. With a principal business of textile and home décor export for backing, Anuja and Mayank have an established clientele of global brands such as Andrew Martin, Pottery Barn and Crate & Barrel.
Collage Shop, the multi-designer fashion and interior store, recently launched Apartment 9 in the city, bringing the interior design label to Bangalore. Occupying almost the entire floor of the designated interior section at Collage, the collection at Apartment 9 is eclectic and offers a stunning mix of home accents and décor, furniture, upholstery and furnishings. The interior design store’s design teams are based in Delhi and Paris and the group operates one furniture factory and three textile factories in Noida. “When we started many years back, we were just MBA graduates. We now have our own design teams and manufacturing outfits. We also source a lot of our home accents and accessories from all over the world,” says Anuja.
The interesting collection at Apartment 9 changes every six months and is influenced by the couple’s travels. “I think our collection offers a little something for everyone. However, what we best have to offer is design solutions for large format homes, between sizes of 10,000 to 12,000 sq.ft. From the laying of the flooring to the space management of the property, we like to get involved from the very start,” she says.
Their store in Bangalore is the first in South India and the couple can’t be more excited. “We had only gone as far as Mumbai before. Bangalore, being a prime city with the presence of several international brands, felt like the right location for our entry into south India,” she says. The section occupied by the interior design store at Collage Shop has been conceived and designed by Apartment 9. “It took us a period of four months to get the space ready. We’re very happy that we found the right partner, location and space for this enterprise and everything just fell into place,” smiles Anuja. While Anuja and Mayank have returned to the heart of their operations in Delhi, a representative trained to understand the product and its offerings is available at the store housed in Collage Shop.
