The Pathbreaking Work Done iTokri Catering to the International Market for Handcrafted Fabrics & Artwork

Insights shared by Mr. Nitin Pamnani, Co-Founder, iTokri

iTokri as a brand believes in taking away the burden of sale from artisans and encouraging them to focus on their craft, ensuring that the artisans get due credit for their art by selling products under the artisan’s name on our platform. We should not forget that the artisans are the real creators and they must always have the freedom to create and grow themselves as an artist. Companies should aim to conserve and upgrade their traditional lifestyles. Artisans are an integral part of our social structure. Today, this is the responsibility of every entrepreneur and other business in India. Nowadays many brands use the technique of using the Stock & Sell Model where the goods/products physically remain with the brand when they are sold to make the best of the opportunity by connecting many artisans with their consumers where every product is quality checked.

Working with the artisans through conducting consulting sessions where the brand’s purchase team explains the demand type from the international customers and buyers provides better analytical insights to them. Regulating the market performance and sharing them with the artisans give them an idea of various types of product categories, prices, etc. At the same time, putting in a lot of effort to understand the business demand and try to balance the consumer expectations and artisans’ work helps a lot. Focusing on art coming from across the country and not limiting it to only one or two geographical regions of India increases the worth of the collection and maintains the diversity that brands always look for which also remains a huge challenge in today’s time and age. Developing a propriety tool that helps with data modulation and building a machine learning module works well for many small businesses catering to international markets which in return helps improve purchase forecasting. This approach not only helps in forecasting demand and managing inventories but as a part of the value chain, helps the artisans to produce and understand the market demand better. It optimizes the purchased quantity leading to enhancing the production process.

The ultimate goal is to create artisan-led crafts that support traditional artworks through restructuring and create better job opportunities for the rising generation paving the way to the international markets. An entrepreneurial approach should be taken for sustainable growth where groups, individual initiatives, and decisions do not get limited, making the collectives flexible enough to respond to market realities. To grow internationally, brands should focus on developing their e-commerce strategy to become multichannel brands, and to continue to create and introduce new products which are sustainable, modern yet comfort-driven. Also, women-led businesses are an added incentive to our economy. The increasing demand for Indian handicrafts resulting in an increase in women's participation in a variety of roles, primarily from underprivileged strata of our society making significant contributions to the industry, has led them to become socially and financially self-independent. They get all the recognition and a fair amount compared to the market rate which helps the sellers sell their products efficaciously that builds their brand in a unique light in the process.

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The D2C route has greatly helped current brands get a toehold across the markets where well-established brands have ruled. Long-established players, who have marked their presence over the time in offline retail and have intimidating distribution clout, are now starting to take the expeditiously growing online channels seriously to defend their overall market share. Moreover, the Aatmanirbhar Bharat movement has exhilarated Indian entrepreneurs to put made-in-India products on the global map, and this is where Indian brands are engraving a niche for themselves in the international market. The mission is to enable artwork communities to sustain their culture with systematic indoctrination and ecosystem building to create modern designs with traditional techniques for sustainable livelihoods through their craft.