Mufti's Experiential Triumph: Immersive, Visual, Sustainable

In this exclusive interview with Everything Experiential, Kamal Khushlani, Founding Director, Credo Brands Marketing Limited shares Mufti Jeans' plans to create immersive brand experiences, leveraging technology, enhancing consumer engagement and much more.

Excerpts:

How does Mufti Jeans plan to create immersive brand experiences for customers, both online and offline?

As far as Mufti is concerned, product has been very important for us as a brand. Our product has built the brand and it's not the other way around. We launched about 25 years ago, and the prime reason for us launching this brand and calling it Mufti is that we thought the type of product we wanted to offer the consumer was unavailable in the Indian market. We saw a huge gap. What we were making at that time was very different compared to what was available. Mufti is a Hindi word used by our armed forces whenever they are not in uniform.

Fashion goes through a very radical shift every 20 to 25 years. When we launched, baggy and loose-fit clothes were the trend and we were the ones that introduced slim fits and all these trends coming back to the Indian market.

What we have been doing in terms of cuts, in terms of fabric, it's a lot about tactility. Everything for us is about touch and feel. There's a lot of creativity and innovation that happens in our brand as far as fabrics are concerned.

Even at the stores, our salespeople are taught to make the customer touch and feel, because only then can the consumer understand how our product is different from others. We make flyweight jeans, which are very lightweight and exclusive to us. We make flyweight shirts too. We deal in imported fabrics, those are our trade secrets. For us, the experience is all about touch and feel.

What experiential initiatives has Mufti employed to enhance customer engagement throughout its retail outlets?

Brands do it on discoverability, they keep the products and the customer comes there and discovers it. Ours is more about visualisation, so we put looks together. If you visit the store, there are different walls, typically 8ft, 10ft or 12ft walls. Each one of them talks of a colour story and a colour palette which creates a unique look for the consumer. We are promoting the tone-on-tone look going forward. Putting together certain looks is how we create an immersive experience for the consumers, including the imagery that we put up in the store that depicts the same look that we are promoting. That's how our salespeople also propose it to the consumers.

How often are these curated looks updated throughout the year?

Typically we work on two seasons, but each season has got five different drops. Every month there's a new drop coming into the stores.

Mufti has been involved in fashion shows and collaborations. How do these events contribute to the brand's experiential marketing approach?

These events ultimately promote the looks that you're proposing to the consumer. Anything new and strikingly different as compared to what a lot of other brands do, is how we propose our products. Our brand is all about expressive clothing. It's very important that whatever we put out there in fashion shows or other events expresses personality.

How is Mufti leveraging technology to create meaningful and memorable experiences for online shoppers?

As far as the online space is concerned, we are still on a journey to create these experiences for our customers. We are working towards creating personalised experiences towards our customer by mapping what their journey is on our website. When a customer comes to the website, where does the customer go? We have 5,000 to 10,000 footfalls every day on our website, ranging from day to day. We intend to create cohorts for our consumers, we will then chalk out personalised campaigns and personalised experiences for our consumers.

How does Mufti foster a sense of community among its customers?

There's a big difference between loyalty versus engagement. As of now, people are still working on the loyalty part and we are also on a journey to start engaging with our customers. Everything we do at Mufti is to try and engage with them. It's important that the consumer touches, feels, and experiences our product.

How is Mufti incorporating eco-friendly practices into its experiential marketing efforts?

We have been working very strongly towards implementing sustainability practices for some time now. Slowly and steadily, we've been taking baby steps towards doing that in many different ways. Right from our packaging materials to the type of fabrics and yarns that we use, not all of it, but we try to use a lot of it recycled.

Can you share insights into how Mufti plans and executes launch events for new collections?

We have a trade show. It is something which is for the trade internally. We do that about six months before the launch of the season. At that time, we design our collections in advance, show it to the partners, get their reviews, get the reviews of our board members and then propose them to the consumers through other events like fashion shows.

We then use our social media platforms to keep exposing our products as and when they keep hitting the stores and they keep getting uploaded on the website to our consumers.