The brand currently sells through its own website, Amazon, Myntra, Flipkart and Nestery having a strong hold on the e-commerce domain
Bengaluru: Making clothes for all generations and everyone, Harbour 9 aims to transform the casual wear market in India by providing quality comfortable apparel. The brand started small by manufacturing everyday clothing for men. But today, receiving tremendous success and a lot of good feedback, the brand is focusing on becoming a one-stop fashion brand for the whole family!
Focused on doing good
Modern consumer wishes to upgrade their wardrobe in a shorter span of time now. Being in trend with the consumer’s current preference based on their feedback and research, Harbour 9 has been reinventing the casual wear category with its offering. Manoj Jain, director, Harbour 9 when talking about the uniqueness the brand brings to the table says, “We at Harbour 9 have been bringing out contemporarily styled apparel line for all the consumers. We strived to dismiss the notion that luxury can be inexpensive too, for which we have been working tirelessly by bringing out quality, cost-efficient products that are not only vibrantly attractive but also durable for longer use than usual”.
Seeing that fast fashion has been negatively impacting the environment with most apparel landing in landfills and incinerators within a year from their production, the brand has also recently introduced a new-age sustainable line of clothing that uses material and yarns from recycled clothes and PET bottles. However, the experiments and varied clothing lines all ties up the concept of comfort with style, ensuring that it stands to fulfill customer needs with ease.
Putting the right foot forward
“We are slowly getting there where the world is. Environment, social, and governance or simply stated as ESG has become a hot topic for businesses to bring down their carbon emissions by revamping their traditional way of functionality. This in turn is for arresting climate change by attaining net-zero emissions that will in turn make the world a better and sustainable place to be,” Manoj comments.
The brand is already aligned with this thought process and has entered into the production of sustainable clothing and want to help the consumer buy sustainable clothing without breaking the bank. He admits that in the D2C ecosystem, the consumer is the deciding factor when it comes to the fate of a brand. In the new age of digitization especially, making or breaking a brand can be instantaneous through online feedback systems maintained by e-commerce marketplaces and search engines.
Acknowledging this he says, “We understand that we will follow the best way to improve by learning the areas of improvement in the most transparent way through consumer feedback. We hence frequently stay in touch with our consumers and keep them posted in real-time about their package in a bid to meet their needs and develop the brand organically, based on consumer trust and authenticity”.
Marketing to grow
The brand understands that social media is a powerful platform to listen to and infer real-time behaviour of the consumer towards the brand and its products. The team is active on these platforms and is continuously seeking inputs from the consumers, both existing and prospective ones to bring out contemporary, quality apparel for all. “During the pandemic, winning the consumer’s trust was the most difficult but opportune moment to prove our mettle. Thus, we ensured safe delivery, regular checkup of staff for streamlined business and ensured their wellness, and communicated with customers in real-time to update them about their package and its delivery details, all through the journey, from purchase to delivery,” Manoj highlights.
With an aim to preserve a strong social media presence where they can connect with customers to solve their queries and also engage with other noteworthy persons who can showcase the brand correctly and expand its reach to newer markets, the brand holds a lot of fun contests for their audience as a way to express their gratitude for their continued support.
Brownie Points
- The brand currently sells through its own website, Amazon, Myntra, Flipkart and Nestery having a strong hold on the e-commerce domain.
- The brand holds sustainability at the core of what they do and wants to keep reinventing their working practices to suit the sustainability requirements.
- From using yarn made from recycled, scrapped clothes and weaving microfibres from PET bottles collected from the oceans, the brand is using new-age tech to make healthy lifestyle change a reality.
- As Harbour 9 expanded its apparel line to women and kids following their success in the men’s apparel line, the sales growth has also hiked, clocking a 5x increase in FY2021-22 compared to the same time in FY2020-21.
First appeared in The India D2C Yearbook 2022
