'New-age Fashion Brands Should Focus on Value Creation.not Valuation'

Bestseller India, CEO Vineet Gautam on the changing trends in fashion retail, the company's digital transformation and industry-wide slowdown

- Rasul Bailay

Vineet Gautam is the India chief executive officer for Danish fashion and lifestyle group Bestseller, overseeing a gamut of brands including Jack & Jones, Vero Moda,

Only, and Selected Homme among other labels. Gautam joined Bestseller in January 2010 and under his stewardship, Bestseller India has emerged as a force to reckon with in India’s burgeoning fashion and lifestyle market, taking Bestseller’s store count from 15 doors about one-and-half decade ago to more than 1,600 stores at present.

Gautam talks to IMAGES Retail about an ongoing retail business slowdown, Bestseller India’s digital transformation; the emergence of D2C fashion brands on India’s fashion and lifestyle scene and the growing pattern of deep discounting by brands that is troubling the industry at present.

Edited excerpts:

A lot of retailers have been talking about a persistent slowdown. How long do you feel it will last?

I think we should look at it from the pre-Covid period till now and the overall growth part. So, in that scenario, we have had decent growth. Pre-Covid to post-Covid there was a large in ux where many fashion businesses received huge upsides. If you look at it from that perspective, there is still growth.

Yes, the last year has been a little bit tough, but it’s also attributed to high in ation—retail in ation, not overall in ation. The interest rate cycle is at its peak. Overall, disposable income for the lifestyle category is impacted. Plus, postCovid, the lifestyle of consumers has also changed. They would like to have more experience. So, some part of the share of the wallet is going to experience and hence the industry is seeing a little bit of a slowdown.

By experiences do you mean travel?