COMO Designer Collective: A one-stop shopping centre

Herald:  How do you position COMO in the retail landscape of Goa?

Pallav Ojha: The idea was to create a one-stop shop destination store with the best designers all under one roof. Goa is technically unexposed to the best designers in the country and we felt this was a business opportunity for us as well as from the point of scalability. We can now tell every Goan that it is possible to buy designs from the best designers in the country at affordable prices. Our main projected target is affordable designer wear because whenever people talk of designer wear, they think of expensive price tags. We were interested in finding ways to reduce the cost and reaching the minds of every Goan and make them realise that such cool wear was really affordable.

 H: When you say affordable, what are the numbers you have in mind?

PO: To give you an example our jewellery accessory range starts at Rs 850 and goes up to Rs 5000. Our Men’s wear shirt starts at Rs 2850 goes up to Rs 6000. Our women’s wear starts at RS 2500 and goes up to Rs 10-12,000 which you pay essentially in any good fashion premium brand outlet if you are looking for a qualitative product and a good design.

H: Is it beachwear or fashion wear that you are focussing on in your business?

PO: We are focussing on three different categories. Keeping the Goan mindset and that we operate here, we are also focussing on the travellers who come here, who are fashion conscious, who want to shop, go around, and the segment that is very big here is the party wear. Goan’s love shopping for occasions; the clothes are also western. That is one subset we focus on. The second category is resort wear; anything you would wear while holidaying, going out for brunches; it is what I call daily pret wear. Third category is beach wear, that is, bikinis, swimsuit in beautiful prints and colours in nice cuts. We also ensure it fits in with the audience. We are making for normal people like you and me. We would like these beautiful designer clothes to fit everybody. If you don’t find your size at COMO, you can place an order, we will have the designer design it and send it to you.

H: Who are the designers featured in the store?

PO: The list is quite long. Anupama Dayal, Gavin Miguel, James Ferreira, Sameer Madan, the Mapshenkar sisters in men’s wear we havde Sanjay Hingu, Arjun Khanna to name a few. There is also a category of accessory designers who are doing very well. In beach wear you have Nidhi Munim, then, there is Vedika in resort wear, Shuti Sancheti in day wear.

H: Who is your consumer here?

PO: Anyone who is stylish from 18 to 50 and above. We don’t focus on age group. We have designers who focus on teenagers and then there are those for women in the 30s, 40s and above. Somebody who wants to make a statement is my consumer. We have only one piece of every design.

H: How has business been?

PO: In the two months we have been open, I did not expect this kind of business; it has been good. I thought people would take a while to accept this concept but no, the results have been very good.

H: What are your plans for the future?

PO: We intend to start another COMO in the coastal belt, somewhere in Candolim area, we will be going online very soon. We intend to focus on selling our fashion wear worldwide and the work has commenced. At this price point no one has made this effort to push them on such a scale. We will be the only store online selling western wear only. Our focus is on making India more fashionable.