Within just two-and-a-half years of its launch, if there’s one homegrown brand which is making its name in the fast fashion industry in India at the moment, it is NEWME. Did the name ring a bell? If you think it is the same brand which caught your eye when you watched an/many episodes or any other MTV Splitsvilla-pertaining content or when you consumed news on funding updates, you’re probably right!
Yes, it’s the same brand with a stark green chameleon logo!
After winning multiple rounds of funding most recently, NEWME is once again making young women’s heads turn over heels with its offline store openings which like other global fast fashion brands has a premium feel to it, but in a refreshingly new way. With walls in pink-to-white colour gradients and no price shoutouts near its apparels, the fast fashion brand from India has found two new store locations for itself- one in Delhi and another in Surat.
Speaking to Marketing Mind exclusive at one such store launch, Sumit Jasoria, Co- Founder and CEO, NEWME, gave a walkthrough of what went behind the inception of NEWME and mentioned that when he was sitting with his three co-founders, the one problem statement which surfaced at the time was that fashion and consumers were both changing together and that fashion was not just about clothes but came across as an aspiration for young women who were actively seeking designs that were more relevant to them on a daily basis.
The pay he puts is that fashion for young women is a way to express themselves and boost their confidence with the core fundamental being- getting what they want rather than waiting months for a collection to drop in the country.
“All of this gave birth to the core premise of NEWME- if something is trending, can we be the first one to get it to the consumer’s hand and be the first fashion trend-brand in India. And then came the entire journey of how we came about leveraging a lot of technology to identify trends and bring the right ones to consumers at amazing price points so as to meet the needs of young consumers for whom money is always going to be a challenge,” he said.
Emphasising on this price and trend quotient that the company has still stood true to whilst keeping intact the ‘WOW!’ factor for its consumers, Jasoria pointed out that now that the brand is going beyond its online store to set up brick and mortar establishments in its key pincode areas, the one thing which NEWME has really set the benchmark high with is the absence of price mention across the entire store with the only exception being the price tag of the product.
“We at NEWME fundamentally believe that building a brand doesn’t need to be expensive. In fact, we share the opinion that if a young woman likes a product and fits it well, she will automatically come and buy again and again from us and hence, we ensure that when we’re building NEWME, there’s no conversation about price anywhere just to ensure that the consumer gets a happy discovery and be ‘Wow!’ and the more wow we can generate in our consumers’ lives, the more they’ll come and buy from us,” he said.
Furthermore, he also went on to throw light onto some of the brand assets of NEWME and stated that the idea behind the germination of the brand’s name as NEWME was also rooted in the core brand fundamental- freshness, depicting how the brand name depicts new-ness every single day.
“The Chameleon in our logo represents a young woman who still is evolving and entrusts us with their fashion choices when it comes to expressing themselves. This is mainly because we don’t want to bound any of the young women of today’s changing India with any particular guardrails as they are evolving to become more aspirational unlike a decade back when women were not given adequate education or not made a part of the main workforce. With the country evolving so rapidly, it is them who are becoming more and more aspirational and therefore, their fashion choices are also evolving much swiftly,” he said.
Having said that, he also went on to question that when the brand’s target audience are looking at fashion differently, basis their tier-wise demographics, why should it be NEWME who’ll bucket them in one class and hence, the chameleon aptly fits in everywhere and help her discover her new self everyday- be it when she’s residing in a Tier I city or when she’s commuting to Tier II and III cities and vice versa.
Upon being questioned on why the brand is looking at expanding its offline footprint in just two-and-a-half years of its launch and in a way which comes across as highly ambitious or bullish, he replied that being the fast fashion brand that it is, NEWME strongly believes that the future of fashion will be phygital, i.e.- a mix of both physical and digital, together, which is why the brand has ensured that all its stores are digitally enabled, meaning the brand’s customers will get loyalty points when they buy online or offline as each consumer for them is a unique person and can therefore choose to buy online or offline depending on her own choice.
“We are seeing consumers buying online when they look at our latest designs and when they want convenience or faster delivery, making the purchases via offline store visits. And that one store visit, for us, is again a different yet unique story for us because we want to give the consumers a unique ‘Wow’ value for each of their store visits and hence, each offline store for us needs to be at one of our most density-appropriate pincodes. The way we arrive at the location for each of our stores- we use data to build each and every of our stores and plan the next ones accordingly, because we don’t want to open a store everywhere. Instead, we want to use the right pin codes in cities to identify next stores and make it easy for consumers to buy from us again,” he elaborated.
Moving ahead, he also emphasised that what this offline-expansion plan has eventually resulted in is a 100x consumer trust, brand awareness, consumer loyalty, and a slew of other things on the brand pyramid for NEWME as 95% of consumers still prefer to buy offline owing to the touch and feel preference for apparel buying.
Since its launch, NEWME has not just been focussed on building its products and brand footprint adequately but has also forged strategic partnerships with youth-centric shows like MTV Splitsvilla, roped in Sanjana Sanghi for its brand campaign and even engaged with a vast variety of influencers, beforehand.
Reflecting on this strategy for the Fashion-Tech brand, Jasoria mentioned that the brand’s marketing road until now has been quite aligned with its business plans as both of them have been digital-first with no spending on mainline advertising and as all sorts of marketing initiatives that the brand has done in the last one-and-a-half years has been skewed on building brand recall.
“Gone are the days when brands could push consumers to buy! Today’s real use case lies in creating moments in consumers’ lives and capturing them aptly in order to be a part of their journey. The only way you can make consumers buy today is by being part of their life and hence, the way we want to build NEWME is by becoming a part of our TG’s moments albeit the festive season, a party or college fest, an ethnic event or more,” he added.
Commenting on what all forms the marketing mix for the brand so far and where is headed towards in the foreseeable future give the fact that the brand has secured multiple rounds of funding as well in the past one year, Jasoria emphasised that it is content which plays a big role for the brand and therefore, being a content-first company, NEWME will only engage in marketing activities where content is being elevated as it believes in the notion that content is the future of business and only more and more content will help it in making better commerce.
“Unlike other brands which look at LiveCommerce for discounting mainly, the way we dabble and experiment with Live Commerce is different via each of our Friday Live sessions. What we do differently is that we talk about our brand and product story, for example- if we’re launching a new ‘metallic- themed’ collection, we’ll educate our audience by explaining to them why the collection is becoming a trend, why they should wear it and much more. Live commerce is a model where you create a brand story because it is exactly where you can go and tell your consumers what you stand for,” he stated.
Throwing light on the measurement yardsticks for growth, he stated that unlike many other brands and marketers, he doesn’t look at the LTV ‘very well’ and aims to solve the consumer’s needs whilst making the brand own more and more share in the consumers’ wallets. To explain the same, he shared the example of how NEWME aims to own half of a young woman’s wallet share if she spends Rs 2000 a month given that she has both- limited money in her wallet and limited space in her wardrobe also.
“In the short term too, our priorities are simple- we want to scale both online and offline without having to fall prey to deep discounting as it is not the right way to build a brand. Hence, we are not on any of the marketplaces in India and only sell on our own website, app and stores and come up with only one sale a year- Black Friday Weekend Sale despite launching fresh collections in stores almost every single week. No brand can actually build on marketplaces in my opinion, since it’s the brand recall that goes for a toss there. The way we want our story to unfold is by owning the consumer experience end-to-end and hence we have consciously decided to not operate in a franchise model,” he said.
Being quizzed on the USP and positioning of GenZ-first fashion tech brand- NEWME, he responded that if there’s one thing which leads to business making in his views it is data. Therefore, when it comes to his own brand, he doesn’t want it to be seen as just a brand but as a consumer technology company since all of NEWME’s designs are backed by data points today which further result in about 30-40 attributes which are there on each style before it goes to production or offline store.
“It is going to be this proprietary stack of of ours which is going to build the biggest lever of growth for us at this scale from a business success POV, however, from a consumer POV, NEWME will always be differentiated by its unique and new style launches at amazing price point every single time,” he quipped.
As for the yearly progress track report of the fashion-tech company, Jasoria stated that NEWME is already hitting the target that he’d put forth at the company at the beginning of the current fiscal year wherein he envisioned the opening of 15 stores, i.e.-7x of the stores it had in the year, in FY25 alone and that it will be able to open its next 7-15 stores before March-end, moving up the tally to 17-18 stores.
“I strongly believe that in the next five-six years we’ll see atleast four-five good brands from India make their name in fashion and hence, at NEWME our ambition is to scale our journey and growth to atleast 5-7x in the next couple of years. As part of our future plans, we’re also aiming to launch a pan-India initiative where consumers can return their NEWME apparels to our stores and avail certain discounts post which we could refurbish those apparels or give them to a needy person because we duly understand and respect our consumers’ expectations from us. Our consumers’ loyalty and love not only lies in us rolling out new designs but in the way we build our business, ethics, customer communication, etc.” he emphasised.
Sharing one piece of advice for fellow entrepreneurs seeking investment from venture capitalists or any other investors, Jasoria mentioned that since the market has become much more mature today, entrepreneurs should look at funding as an important lever of growth to scale their business. But at the same time, they are no longer enticed by growth and look at economics, and profitability of business with not the mindset of ‘scaling at all costs’ but with the mindset of ‘staying and scaling with sustainability’.
“If you run very fast, you’ll end up falling very early. Running a successful business is like running a marathon and not a sprint, hence you need to keep building, building and building, and constantly learn from consumers as it is their feedback which will help you grow further and farther,” he suggested.
