Kids outgrow clothes very fast and significant amounts of non-renewable resources get used to make their clothes that are used only for a short time. The start-up PureCloth.co has found a way to reinvent the way kids’ clothes are made.
To extend usage, PureCloth has devised the ‘Grow-with-me’ collection which applies the art of design featuring extendable outfits that grow along with the kids. The firm follows Circular Fashion Design Principles; all their outfits are designed and manufactured to be disassembled so that they can be repaired, reused, remade and recycled. To eliminate waste, it repurposes fabric scraps into hair accessories.
Says PureCloth Co-founder Nandini Girish, “Our products are made from safe and recycled or renewable sources. We source material that is 100% rain-fed organic cotton, naturally dyed and handwoven. The packaging and labels use recycled paper. All these ensure that the health of the people as well as the ecosystem is protected.”
“Every customer purchase contributes to our regular donation events. We work with fair wage vendors only, hire local women artisans and conduct upskilling trainings. We aim to save time and money, as well as reduce landfill and pollution”, she adds.
Sharing how their journey began, PureCloth Co-founders Nandini Girish and Dhiju Anoob said that they met at the National Institute of Fashion Technology (NIFT), Bengaluru. In 2017, they decided to walk away from their high-paying jobs to build a circular fashion brand for kids that will have a profound impact on the society. “At the PureCloth.co design studio, we tirelessly explore how outfits for children can be made to be comfortable and safe”.
Dhiju leads the new product ideas, production activities, marketing, content design, photography and website, along with the training initiatives to upskill and empower women artisans. She is a B Tech CSE graduate with more than 11 years of garment construction and pattern making experience.
Nandini leads new product releases, product quality control, content management, finance, and customer engagement, ensures efficient operations and manages artisans/vendors. She is an MCA graduate with over 15 years’ experience in setting up quality and management systems for Pharma MNCs.
The Co-founders say that the Women Start-up Programme at NSRCEL upskilled them in developing a profitable subscription-based business model and helped them rebrand to align to customer value, based on the learnings from customer interviews, and multiple rounds of product testing. “The individual mentorship and collaboration with programme peers helped us refine our strategy for real-world solutions, and further shape the future roadmap. To validate our new ideas, the monetary support helped significantly in laying the foundation for experimentations”, shares Nandini.
Dhiju adds that having a running business helped them apply the learnings from NSRCEL. “For the last few months, we established a monthly rhythm of business tracking based on KPIs and refined the execution strategies to meet the KPIs. This helped us with MoM growth in terms of revenue and new customer acquisition for our existing products.”
