With love and passion, noting is impossible: A Story of Kamal Khushlani, Founder & Managing Director of Mufti

Retail icon of India awards, Brand of the year in men’s casual wear at APEX awards, Customer loyalty initiative of the year award and retailer of the year award- attainment of all these happened for a new brand in the apparel industry with the time span of 20 years.

It is Kamal Khushlani, the Founder and Managing Director of Apparel brand MUFTI. He lost his father at the age of 19. He hails from a middle-class background. He started his journey with a barrowed capital of Rs.10,000 from his maternal aunt and grew his business to a Rs. 395 crore brand today. Kamal did all these with his love and passion towards fashion retail business. His ambition is to provide an alternative dressing solution that didn’t conform to the ‘Uniform’ codes of mainstream fashion.

Kamal’s first journey as entrepreneur with ‘Mr & Mr’ brand

In 1992, Kamal Khushlan identified a gap in how the menswear was evolving as Indian fashion trends were observing a great shift. Though there were many brands and styles in jeans like bootcut to bellbottom, every brand was offering a similar pattern almost with the same quality level. Kamal desired to come up with a product was advanced fashion for Indian men. However, he had a profound interest in the fashion business, because of his middle-class background and lost his father at the age of 19, he had no money to exploit on his vision. He had no regrets for working with a video cassette company to make his dream come true. Finally, he started his dream project by borrowing Rs.10,000 from his maternal aunt (mother’s sister) and took a first step of his entrepreneurial journey. In 1992, he launched ‘Mr & Mr’ shirt company which manufacturing and retailing shirts for men.

Launch of Mufti in 1998

Though, his new business was running fine, Kamal felt that there was enough vacuum in the apparel industry to fill by using his business skills. A self-taught fashion designer, brand strategist, and futurologist Kamal had a firm belief in creating a new wave of culture and fashion that originates in India and is incorporated worldwide. With this as his vision, he launched Mufti in 1998. ‘Mufti’ is a Hindi term which means ‘casual dressing’ as opposed to a uniform. Kamal has chosen this name because the company made cloths that were very diverse from those sold by other brands during that time period and he positioned his brand accordingly as an alternative clothing.

Kamal started Mufti single-handedly: Fellow commuters laughed at him while carrying stock on his bike

Kamal started Mufti with single-handedly. He used to transmit kilos of textile fabric on his bike and drop it off at the workshop and then come back to collect the finished products for sale. For so many years he did the same all by himself. He recycles the money he what he earned from his business.  He had no office and no table. He was the workers and proprietor of his business. He just used the space underneath of his dining table as warehouse. When he had to collect the shirts from the workshop, he could pick up about 60 pieces at one time as had a large suitcase on which he got straps attached by mochi. It would look really funny as many a times he would be in traffic where his bike could pass through but he had to wait as the with of the suitcase slung on his back was too wide for him to pass. So, he was a laughing stock for his fellow commuters.

Raised as a delightful brand by customers

In 2000s, Mufti gained prominence, expanding from exclusive brand outlets to large and multi-branded outlets and large-format stores. The reason behind its expansion lies in the love and acceptance of its customers. Customers loved the new style, fit, cut and comfort they offered. The older brands were continuing with the old patterns of fashion while Mufti introduced new styles. That differentiated Mufti from other Indian brands.

Mufti was one of the first brand to introduce stretch jeans for men

Kamal says that Mufti was one of the first brands to acquaint with stretched jeans for men. He describes that Denim is a rigid fabric and stretchable fabric was used in jeans exclusively for women then. When Mufti presented it in the men’s fashion, it was well-received by the market. Mufti’s source of material from many Indian mills including KG Denim, Arvid mills, NSL and Mafatlal. The buttons and other accessories are also obtained from India and the collection is made in third-party manufacturing units in Bangalore, Ludhiana, Tirupur, etc.

The company has over 600 employees on its direct payroll and indirectly employs over 2000 people. It manufactures a range of over 500 products every season which includes jeans, trousers, shorts, athleisure, jackets, t-shirts and more.

The challenges being faced by Mufti

In its journey of 23 years Mufti has seen many ups and downs. During this remarkable journey, the company has faced its own set of challenges, especially when it came to expansion. A few years back the company launched a whole new women’s collection in jeans. Nevertheless, they soon realised that women could not be was not their target audience as they were not picking up Mufti’s collections. Tus, it lasted only for a short period of time. The business also moderately hit by demonetization and implementation of GST for a couple of months. After that affect, it gained its momentum and has been running successfully for the past few years. Raising the concept of e-commerce is another major challenge that need to be exploited. However, being a brand, the company’s focus is to spread across all sales channels. Though there are huge discounts in the e-commerce platforms, Mufti neither give discounts on sole platforms nor do they have a distinct inventory. If one channel has a discount, it will be for everywhere else that Mufti brand is present.

Journey with a barrowed capital of Rs.10,000 to a Rs.395 crore brand

Since its beginning, Mufti has grown as a denim casualwear brand and presently retails through 300 exclusive brand outlets, 1200 multi-brand outlets and 110 large format stores like Central and Shoppers Stop throughout India. It also entered the footwear market in 2017 and launched men’s shoes across 100 stores in India. Mufti reached a turnover of Rs.350 crore in 2018 and expecting to grow in the future. Mufti is presently focusing on integrating new brands in its collection and is also planning to enhance to its footprints in Indian market by expanding its reach to every corner of the nation. They currently not planning to enter the foreign market as of now.

Finally…

The remarkable journey of Kamal Khushlani is a great example for many youngsters today who aspires to be an entrepreneur. Its best to dive right in and learn the hard way to come up in life. One should not compromise with situations and the challenges they face. If you have an idea, start it today. There is no better time than now to get going. It doesn’t mean to quit your present job and jump into your idea completely from day one but there is always small progress that can be made to start the movement. Finally, with love and passion, nothing is impossible.