Lavanya Pachisia, CEO, Zivame, stated that it is women (70 percent) who run the business and show how best lingerie shopping can be done at Zivame.
“The testament of what you are building is listening back to the consumers,” she added.
She shared the spotlight with Lakshmi Subramaniam Murugesh, Head of Product Innovation, Zivame, and Dr. Kiruba Devi P, Head of Category and Sourcing, Zivame at Storyboard18’s Share The Spotlight event in Bengaluru.
While addressing the retail space which is traditionally male dominated, she said, “We started Zivame’s journey to solve the poor shopping experience when it came to lingerie. Most of us will remember we used to shop in mom-and-pop stores, the uncle would ask what you want and pretty much fit you into the size he had in mind and sell it to you.”
“We wanted to create a safe and unique shopping experience for women. It was the era where e-commerce was developing. Take out your mobile, order it, we will discreetly pack it and send it back to your house. It will be for women and by women,” Pachisia added and said, “More than 70 percent of our organization has women. We have more than 175 stores, all stores are managed by women. We have zero male workforce in our stores. For inclusion, sometimes we say get men, but all customer-facing roles are done by women. We started training programs and started identifying women from the retail workforce.”
For Zivame and Pachisia the challenge was to get many women onboard. She pointed out another key challenge, “Unfortunately, even today, after so much education, most women do not wear the correct size of lingerie. It’s actually a revolution to a large extent.”
For Murugesh who builds the product, a bra is a very technical product even though it is sold like a commodity. More than 50 parts are built to make a bra.
“My journey at Zivame has been great; this place gave me the opportunity to go all out and explore. Traditionally, there was a category that had little product offering, but women were adjusting irrespective of size. This category is such that women are still not vocal about their issues, likes, dislikes, comfort, and discomfort.” she states.
“In my career, I have realized every woman’s body is different, and you cannot generalize a woman’s body. In the process of decoding the pain points, we co-create a product along with the consumer, ensuring that there is something for every life stage and body type. Designing with empathy is a core value for us,” she adds.
While talking about the category, Dr. Kiruba said, “Nothing goes beyond data. We do a lot of innovation. How do we marry the data with the product line? That is the challenge and I ensure things are data-driven.”