Liva Made Clothes Are Moving From The Shelves Faster Than Other Brands

Rendezvous

Liva Made Clothes Are Moving From The Shelves Faster Than Other Brands

Liva has been in the spotlight since it hit the market with its ‘natural fluid fabric’ promise. A basic ingredient, the fibre - Liva has created a fashion wave that is heavily accepted by the consumers and recommended by the brands and the designers alike. Liva definitely pushes the textile value chain to integrate it with fashion. We tried to strike a conversation with Manohar Samuel, President, Birla Cellulose, Grasim Industries Limited, to hear about the successes of Liva and explore the fluid story of the brand.

How do you describe Liva as a fabric, apart from saying it is a ‘natural fluid fabric’?

We see Liva as a movement. At the product stage as much as in the value chain. Liva Gives you such fluidity that, it's beyond the functional nature of fluidity within the boundaries of fashion. We are taking the emotional aspect of fluidity into consideration when we sit to describe Liva. The fabric moves to your rhythm with you. So, Liva as a brand has evolved from the fabric stage to create an emotional connect with the consumers. Today a woman makes the choice to buy the brand, pushed by strong emotions more than just believing in the functionality she is buying. Now one can have a good functional preposition as much as that encompasses the emotions of getting attached to a fluid lifestyle.

What are the core reasons that Birla Cellulose’s VSF has been branded as Liva?

The idea of branding comes from the concept of a clear consumer proposition. The initial thoughts that we poured in were to analyse and understand how a consumer benefits from a fibre. The core idea that we encountered through this consumer insights was fluidity. From there on we further delved deeper to understand how the fibre can benefit the partner brands, given that we were branding the ingredient and not the final product. Once we began tackling the idea of value addition for the partner brands and they gave us a head start by confirming how the fluidity of the fabric can have versatile usage. We delved even deeper to create a consumer connect with the ‘Liva’ made finished garment and noted the user expectations and studied their experiences. This was definitely the first part of the branding exercise, which was of course driven by strong consumer insights and brand analysis and rested on the shoulders of ‘fluidity’. Having achieved a voice for Liva, we understood that we cannot simply rest our brand on only advertising and thus came the idea of tags. And this became our weapon to keep the brand alive. An ingredient tag to go with the other brand tags, to highlight Liva.

Liva is versatile. How far can the versatility be extended when it comes to the Indian ethnic apparel market?

In the textile value chain, the fabric is always the hero. Fabric engineering thus is a very important aspect for our stakeholders, as part of the Liva Accredited Partner Forum (LAPF). Their intention is always to mould and make newer identities for Liva through blends and structures. The last season marked a heavy shift in usage, with Liva finding its use in women’s ethnic wear as compared to its earlier usage in western wear. The shift and the spread of Liva within the ethnic apparel market were due to two dominant qualities of the brand: drape and comfort. Just to sum it up in favour of Liva’s versatility, I would want to mention that the fabric has pushed the brands to design ethnic wear differently and the same has definitely added to the advantage of the market and the brands.

How has been acceptance of Liva by brands and how brands are supported and advantaged by the Birla Cellulose to adopt Liva?

Liva has performed phenomenally well with the brands. One of the primary advantage of using Liva, is the after wash performance. Fabricators and brands alike have been very satisfied with the after wash results for Liva. The ingredient can not only add stylish values to your creation but is naturally fluid too that can be molded to your benefit.

Will Liva brand be extended to all producers and brands that consume Birla Cellulose’s VSF from different locations (India and beyond)?

The growth for Liva happens within the supplier chain and the same is fueled through the Liva Accredited Partner Forum (LAPF). The partners of this forum have benefited tremendously at three dimensions. One by supplying to their existing customers, two by supplying and making newer brands and customers aware of Liva and third by supplying to the International brands. Liva reaches out to the International pedestal through LAPF and has not only this way gained prominence but have resulted into domestic growth of the partners too. The forum is transparent and traces sustainable practices all along the value chain. We have definitely not gone and launched Liva separately within the international market but we have got an extremely good hold internationally through LAPF as our fulcrum of support, especially the European markets to be more precise.

Where do you see the brand reaching in terms of sales and market in the next two years?

We are very confident that we will have a very good growth in the coming months. While the women’s wear domestic market is growing at a pace of almost about 7%, we will definitely have a growth twice as much within the domestic market. Liva made clothes are also moving from the shelves faster than the other brand products. Of course apart from the tangible growth, we also should consider the intangible side of the growth story, which of course includes ‘Liva’s unmatched offerings of zero defects, best pilling rating and minimal to no shrinkage. So, when there will be a supply from India inclusive of these benefits, then with time the country will be looked forward to for functionally activated stylish garments. Through this, we will definitely be able to reach new heights of growth in the time to come and proceed to make our value chain stronger at the apparel and garment level too.

In the context of other natural fibres, how ‘fluid’ is the market for Liva in the longer run?

Liva is definitely the fastest growing fibre today. Viscose since the last 12 years has enjoyed a 4% share within the fibre basket. But today it has jumped to a 5% mark. We are growing at 8% CAGR today. Today Liva and polyester filament yarn are growing the fastest and enjoying a good consumer connect too. The reason is definitely how these ingredients have found extensive consumer popularity, which will only grow with time.