Designing lingerie for Gen-Z, Bhavin Devpuria shares his out-of-the-box visions on comfort and quality
The Man
Bhavin Devpuria, the Marketing Head of Sloggi, India has been a man with bigger visions. He is a true marketing virtuoso with the unique ability to give businesses new life and has successfully managed to crack the codes of consumer perceptions by creating vivid storylines that appeal to people's hearts and minds.
During his stint at Vodafone-Idea, he steered associations with IPL teams - KXIP and SRH to build brand salience, which led to an up-scaled track. He also worked with Trent Ltd (Westside, Landmark), where the top launches were of westside.com, scaling sessions by 4X in a short time.
Bhavin has been the mind behind successful campaigns like #BiggestSmallChallenge for Idea 4G and ‘BlifondSale’ for EZone and his strategic abilities have made Sloggi a success while navigating the turbulent waters of competition.
After completing his MBA in Marketing from Amity University, Mr. Devpuria entered the marketing world, and since then, he has been unstoppable. His performances have made him shine bright among others, and he’s still continuing to glitter in the business world.
In this interview, we got along with him and tried to understand his opinions on his marketing strategies, his aim, and vision towards building this brand, how he manages the manufacturing, and whatnot.
Collections
Talking about his new collection and launches, Bhavin emphasized that his brand is focusing on ‘Modal’. Modal is basically a breathable fabric. He appreciated the quality of this fabric and also added that he’s brought a good range of underwear. Moving ahead, he told us about the ‘Pacman’ collection', which was a modern collection introduced both for men and women.
“We're looking at Genesis as a population we want to build towards. Hence, our global audience and the audience in India are mainly between the age group of 18 to 25. So, our launches are keeping in mind all of these. We've got ‘body adapt’, for women, it is body adapt and ‘zero feel’ for men, and we’re focusing more on briefs”, quotes Bhavin.
Bhavin is a man who portrays his modern observations and visions behind designing the new launches.
Fashion Inspirations
Talking about his fashion inspirations, Bhavin says, “So, this is also about the global running trends, and when we talk about the ‘GenZ’, they are generally joyful. They're casual yet opinionated. They're real. So all our designs and everything are that real as well. That’s how we design our products too, where we also try to express ourselves. You will find underwears for men that are not just the regular play or colored. We have different prints and different designs. We've got a couple of camouflage underwears as well.
As I mentioned, we did a Pacman series. Well, even Sloggi goes on similar lines.
So it's also about, breaking the normalcy of living. It’s like ‘being out there!’. Really expressive, though keeping all these abstracts in mind, that's how most of our products are designed globally.”
His unique take on the new generation has made things inspiring. Going modern with such an approach is enough to showcase the unique mindset of Sloggi.
Journey To India
Telling about the journey of Sloggi, Bhavin introduced us to Triumph Brand, a leader in the field of lingerie. He explained this association and told -
“Triumph being a sister concern is one of the experts in lingerie making. With their support and backing, Sloggi came out of Triumph which has been a pioneer for the last 45 years and Triumph, which has been there for the last 137 years.”
Bhavin said that his brand analyzed the Indian market, and the modern approaches of this market, especially targeting the youth, who have different opinions of lingerie wear and inner-wear fashion. And then slowly Sloggi made a successful entry into the Indian market.
Bhavin says “Our basic inspiration is ‘All bodies’, ‘All shapes’, ‘All sizes’.”
Vision
The tagline of Sloggi is ‘Liberating True Comfort’.
Bhavin expressed his concern for the target audience of young men and women, who comprise the larger proportion of the census.
He described how his brand has worked towards providing comfort to the new generation, whose concepts of trends are different. This different approach is tackled beautifully by Sloggi through its unique, quirky designs.
Marketing Strategies
“Any content, any campaign that we want to create is always on the lines of being relatable, more real to ourselves, to our consumers and target audience to a basis that, we do not restrict ourselves towards gender or anything. For us, everybody, every size, every shape including sexual orientation, is equally important”, says Bhavin.
Yet again, he describes his unique opinions on the younger generations. Bhavin emphasized that the take of the younger generation on wearing underwear is very different from old times. Now people want to express their lingerie, often as a style statement, but without becoming obscene or vulgar. So, Sloggi focuses on styling underwear to assist these kinds of modern opinions.
Design Process
According to Bhavin, the USP of any inner-wear brand should be Quality and Comfort. Sloggi, with such a massive experience as a lingerie brand, has successfully been a pioneer in quality lingerie manufacturing.
He also said that his brand has always gone through a thorough procedure of fabric selection, quality testing of fabrics, and fabric processing {which especially is done in Europe and Germany}.
This not only ensures that every product is designed by a complete quality check procedure, but also that these products are suitable for your comfort.
Challenges
When asked about challenges and competition in the market, Bhavin expressed that Sloggi, just like other brands, also faced several challenges; the challenge of pricing, depending on the economy of the market, which also varies from region to region. Moreover, the challenges of making high-quality and comfortable products, so that Sloggi outshines every aspect of the market.
Sustainability in Innerwear
Bhavin’s analysis of Sustainability is that sustainability is a requirement, that is supposed to be achieved. He further says that Sloggi is slowly trying to achieve this feat, and the brand tends to grow in this as it is a long process, changing with times and situations.
Future Plans
Bhavin says that Sloggi plans to grow bigger and better with time. The aims are simple, putting expansion, and extension as targets. Opening a lot of client stores, and launching a new set of collections, Sloggi is planning to go on with all of these, within a short span of time. Moreover, it targets every set of society, from men and women to young and old, everyone. The youth, which is young, and the people, who ‘feel young’, everyone is on the priority list of Sloggi.
Conclusion
Summing things up, Sloggi aims to provide comfort and quality to everyone. Sloggi is not just a conventional lingerie brand, that goes behind traditional structure and designs. Instead, Sloggi aims to go out of the box and provide us with modern styles, and make a fashion statement in the innerwear range.
Bhavin, who has successfully been carrying this brand with his new-gen ideas and quirky takes on style, is definitely a man to look out for. He has been an inspiration for all and we loved to have an enlightening session with him.
Written By: Bhagwat Jha
Edited By: Chirajita Gupta