Supply chain in Bangladesh restored after disruption: Max Fashion

Landmark Group lifestyle brand Max Fashion's supply chain has been restored in Bangladesh after witnessing a brief disruption due to ongoing political unrest, Pallavi Pandey, Head of Marketing told Storyboard18. Pandey said that at the beginning of the crisis in August, Max Fashion India faced major disruption in sourcing but in the past one week, things have restored.

"There was a slowdown which was happening in terms of the sourcing in the deliveries, but everything got cured last week," Pandey said.

Further, she revealed that the apparel-to-accessories conglomerate is eyeing to deeply penetrate other territories such as Vietnam and India to strengthen its supply chains. "For the future, we all have to find the right space where it balances out, like Vietnam and even India as we have a good base in Tirupur and other places too".

Max Fashion's youth-centric brand Max Urban brand recently launched a partnership with Bollywood actor Alaya F to reinforce its popularity among Gen Z. Urban was launched this year in April. "So far Max Fashion, an international fashion house from Dubai, has focused on its core customers such as kids and families. However, this year, we decided to connect with the 17 and 24 age group as it's a tech-savvy segment with a lot of exposure to international styles and fashion," Pandey said.

She said that the launch of Urban has boosted the online business for the brand, and added that the offline business has remained unaffected. "Considering the surge in demand from the 17-24 age group on both online and offline channels has a positive impact on our business. Therefore, it was imperative for us to launch Max Urban across 515 stores". The fashion conglomerate has planned to expand its stores in metro cities, specifically in malls. Pandey said that the value fashion brand added almost 100 stores in 1-1.5 years and is looking for a double-digit expansion this year. "We are looking for independent High Street big stores for us in Metro and state capitals such as Lucknow, Jaipur, and Ahmedabad to scale up brand reach".

"We contribute almost 85% of our business to brick and mortar and 15% to online," she added.

Pallavi also stated that Max Fashion is not looking to enter into any premium segment because "our proposition is fashion at great value".

On AI, Pandey said that that clothing brand has a lot of analytics and learning within the new technology, and added, "It's too early to adapt too many things in terms of our large settled business across 20 plus countries. We are using AI in terms of the loyalty and the CRM base where we would be able to understand the choices of customers and their buying habits".