KALPADRUMA

Lakshmi Devi of Kalpadruma speaks to Chennaibest.com about Kalpadruma and its future plans.

The company was founded by K Parameshwaran in 1971, mainly to export hand-woven fabric and bed linen to the United States. It started out as an export house with special customers, like exclusive boutiques.  That is where it all started. 

Then, with demand picking up, they started exporting to Australia, New Zealand and United Kingdom.  In 1994, retail operations began with Kalpadruma.  It started off as a handicrafts showroom. It was sourcing handicrafts from all over the country.  It had a very exclusive niche of people.

Not anything and everything... rather, we identified a few craftsmen who were languishing in someway, we gave them input ideas to make even traditional handicrafts become utilitarian items, where even the common man would want to buy it, because it is not just a showpiece, but it has another value attached to it.  Once we gave our inputs, they went to work on those ideas.

The specialty is that we have crafts from all over India, from every nook and corner, wherever it is possible to go and identify people who are doing unique crafts. Every season we come out with something different and new.  It is a process, which just keeps evolving, and we have designers who are working with them to do this kind of thing.   We work with very specialized craftsmen and we don’t get our requirements from any other sources.  We have a family of about 150 craftsmen with us.  That is how we started and after that we diversified into home textiles, which is another big area.

We did a lot of printed linen, apart from what we were exporting and a lot of other things started coming into the store and that did very well.  And that became a logical extension into ladies clothing.  That was another big area that we never thought we would start, but we did finally.  It did very well.  I would attribute this to the work that goes into the product and the quality that is coming out from our weavers.  The customer is assured that s/he is getting the best.  You are also catering to a large segment of people. Also textiles are something that you need to keep buying.  You know that it is not like a display that you buy, which is for once.  And especially when women are the decision makers, they need to keep coming back; there is no end to clothing.  That is how this part of it went and it is about eight years now since we ventured into this and we have got a stabilized clientele.  A lot of locals, more than tourists, I would say, are coming in.

We are going to do a lot of events and we are going to showcase our craftsmen.  Till now we were focussing on products but then maybe over the years we have realized that we need to present them instead of just their products alone.  We are going to have shows where we will feature a particular craftsman and make it an exhibition of his products and then whatever is the proceeds will go back to him to bring out his skill in an even better way.  I guess events are the key now to bring people in and we need to keep creating some interest and people are going to come back.

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