After spending 10 years in advertising, Arpita Ganesh planned to put a stop on her flourishing advertising career to launch Buttercups, India’s first luxury lingerie boutique. She went to Dubai to train with Chantelle, to learn about bras, bra fitting and realized that she was natural at this.
Then, in 2009 she started Buttercups that will exclusively retail lingerie brands such as Chantelle, Trinny & Sussanah, Cette, et cetera from July this year in India. This idea came to her during a bra fitting session in New York in early 2008 that changed her life! For the first time Ganesh loved her body, felt confident and had a great posture.
She made up her mind that she had to offer the same to as many women she can because every woman deserved to feel the change that Ganesh had felt. However, soon she realized that the Indian market wasn’t ready to pay Rs 5000 for a bra! And, those who wanted to come for a fitting to find their right size couldn’t afford to!
While learning all about bras, she also started blogging to share information widely. Today, her blog Abrathatfits.com is India’s most informative blog about bras. Simultaneously, she had to find a way of telling women how to measure themselves before buying bras from her.
For three months, Ganesh studied six brands to understand and decode bra sizing. Based on this research, she worked on a back end matrix (including lots of measuring stats and inches-centimeter conversions) whereby women could measure themselves as directed and the matrix would reveal their size.
The matrix worked well giving me a 98 per cent accuracy rate in measurements. This led to the launch of ABTF (A Bra That Fits), India’s only bra fitting application available on IPhone and Android.
The blog and app helped greatly to generate interest amongst different brands so she began consulting with both International and Indian lingerie brands including M&S India, Amante, Fredrick’s of Hollywood, LA helping with their market strategy, product development and sourcing.
Through these assignments and having fit over 3000 women by 2013, she realized that she needs to develop her own brand of bras, as the entrepreneur understood what women in India wanted and their struggle to find their sizes.
Ganesh is working with a designer in Hamburg, and a manufacturer in Hong Kong to make bras in over 80+ sizes. Internationally 150 sizes are available whereas in India currently most brands offer only 30 odd sizes!
At this juncture she needs to raise money for developing the inventory but no investor was willing to invest in her business. She decided to appeal directly to the women who related to this need for a well-fitting bra, her existing customers and believers to help her raise this fund. In early 2014, Ganesh launched India’s largest crowd sourcing initiative (a pre-order model) for a product Fundbuttecrups.in.
It’s going well and now Ganesh is on the verge of launching the label in July 2014. Buttercups, promises women a fabulous new experience, that of well-crafted, beautifully designed, well-fitting and affordable bras in sizes that are just right for them!
