In the last few years, shopping of lifestyle products has seen a gradual shift from brick and mortar stores to online space. And it is not just retailers of machine-made ready-made items, now the practitioners of handloom and handicrafts are also finding their patrons in the digital space. Even though some of it is being done in an unorganised way, the design world has begun to embrace e-commerce in a big way.
New trend
David Abraham
Acknowledging this new development, veteran couturier David Abraham, says his brand A&T has started taking the online space seriously. The famous design house now has a website too with professionals running it. “We have observed that people are now buying in increasing volume handloom products like saris from e-commerce sites. Even though they cannot touch and feel, customers are obviously aware of the quality of handloom and handmade products and believe in the intermediary, the portal. I think it is just a matter of time when most of fashion business will be done online,” he says. He underlined this point at a panel discussion organised by Etsy with Dastakar on ‘Design & Craft in the Digital World’ to drive a conversation around the importance of digital space in collaboration with the traditional textiles and techniques with contemporary designs . An e-commerce site, Etsy, started in Brooklyn, New York in 2005, and focuses on handmade products and vintage items.
Sharing his Etsy story, David revealed that he used to be a heavy smoker and was frantically searching for a cigarette holder. “I couldn’t find anywhere After searching the internet, I finally found this incredible small shop on Etsy, where I started buying them time and again. I found the quality to be amazing and it reached me on time, while I could track its journey. I feel it is an incredible platform and I could find these in different designs, every possible size, made with different materials like wood. So it’s amazing to see such variety and creativity.”
What Abraham says makes sense as at a recent pop up organised by Etsy at Bikaner House a bunch of Indian women entrepreneurs showcased an array of handcrafted art works, curios, accessories and home décor which people could ‘touch and feel’ before they could open their wallets on Etsy. These women have been using it to script their own success stories.
“A big part of the reason why Etsy came into being was that the founders were frustrated that all the e-commerce sites were only producing mass made merchandise and not giving artists a chance to create something unique,” says Linda Kozlowski, Chief Operating Officer, Etsy.
The artists have to meet certain parameters. “They should be designing and creating goods. This means that they should be original designers or creators. We don’t want a marketplace where same products are available on other websites. We also give buyers an opportunity to directly interact with the creator, ” says Linda.
“India has a deep and rich history of crafts and there is variety of different crafts based on regions of the country. But what we have seen is that there is a huge demand in the rest of the world for Indian crafts, so there is a strong affinity from the buyer and we have seen that our global buyers who buy from India are much more valuable than the ones who don’t,” she adds.
Vasundhara, a textile designer from the Srishti School of Art Bangalore, who participated in the pop up, says she embarked on her entrepreneurial journey with just a solitary throw cover. Its acceptance motivated her to design bags, jewellery necklaces “We get fabrics from mass manufacturing units in Faridabad. Sometimes, I get defected ones too. Therefore, I upcycle them instead of throwing them into landfills.”
Anab Naiyer
Like Vasundhara, Anab Naiyer, who strikes a balance between her work and her study to complete her Ph.D. from Jamia Millia Islamia, started with only knitwear. However, today she is an expert in crochet and fibre art that has been a way of life for women of her home in Bahraich for generations. “I like doing it; it has become my passion. I grew up watching mother and grand mother effortlessly working on quilting, knitting, crochet making and doing embroidery on multiple outfits. In fact, my grandmother Niaz Fatima taught me all tricks related to creating handcrafted things.”
Touch and feel
Commenting on the skills of these enterprising women who dream of making customers across the world, designer Anupama Dayal says the relevance of online space cannot be understated and those who are taking time to get used to it is purely a question of time and adjusting the eye and the habit of touch and feel through such offline pop ups.
“Here I feel that websites, the concept and philosophy like Etsy will bridge this gap for those of us who still see the soul in all their purchase decisions and look for human connection,” sums up Anupama.
