As a fashion accessory, footwear plays a very important part in a woman’s wardrobe. Along with style the comfort factor too ranks equally high while choosing footwear. For Guneesha Kohli of PariPari, being a woman plus an entrepreneur, meant that she had a decisive edge when she ventured into creating high-quality women’s footwear.
She says, “At PariPari comfort meets cool. We fondly call them Sole Staples. With over a decade of experience in shoe making as an export unit crafting footwear for global fashion stores, the COVID impact gave impetus to the creation of a homegrown brand with global design sensibilities and global ambitions.”
PariPari – slow fashion footwear that is fast becoming a trending brand!
While working with the 30 years old family business of handicraft exports, Guneesha Kohli used to often be asked about where someone could buy their products locally. This made her realize that there was a lack of homegrown footwear brands in India.
With the intention of starting her own footwear brand she applied for the WSP program by NSRCEL, IIM Bangalore and was amongst the top 200 out of 11800 applicants to get incubated. Expressing her gratitude Guneesha says, “The team at NSRCEL and the mentors have hand held me to conceptualize and launch PariPari the way I did. I owe the success of PariPari to them.” Guneesha’s Msc. Tech Entrepreneurship degree from UCL, London too has helped her take the brand further.
In April 2020, with the Covid pandemic hitting the export business hard, Guneesha with her 3 month old baby in her arms and in midst of postpartum depression, took the brave decision of conceptualizing PariPari as a B2C brand. Today PariPari is a much sought after fashion footwear brand. Says Guneesha “We use high-quality eco-friendly materials like linen, jute and genuine leather and combine them with age-old techniques like crochet, beadwork, ikat and embroidery, to create premium artisanal slow fashion footwear.”
The PariPari USP is the jute sole espadrilles. Completely hand woven and hand-stitched it is the only company in India making these. It also offers a repair policy where if a shoe opens up, it is re-stitched so a customer can prolong its use and prevent fashion waste.
PariPari more than a footwear brand… now a coveted fashion statement
With a product line that caters to an emerging class of choosy, fashion and environment conscious customers, Guneesha Kohli says “We were overwhelmed at the response we got to our launch bang in the middle of the second wave. It boosted our morale and our finances a great deal and we recovered our initial investment of Rs.2 lakhs within the first month itself.”
These positive build ups around the PariPari brand augur well for the future. It is now set to go to the next level of achieving the status of a coveted fashion accessory to be flaunted with pride. By concentrating on aggressive brand awareness and expanding the brand footprint, PariPari aims at having physical stores in Delhi and Mumbai in the next 5 years and is simultaneously expanding its online reach to include an ever expanding customer base.
To know more, visit –
https://pariparilife.com/
https://www.instagram.com/pariparilife/
https://www.facebook.com/PariPari-100937348537019
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