Delhi based Anusha Jain; a 22 year old girl is one true fashionista. Seeing her graduate degree from Pearl Fashion Academy and her post graduate in MBA from S.P Jain Institute of Management and Research, no one would believe that this is the girl who gave a newly carved perspective to socks. Yes, yes you read it correctly, Anusha the pro fashion freak and management student unlike most business students, has seen the potential in the simplest accessory of our daily use, the socks that we wear.
It’s strange how we have this crazy fetish for smart and comfortable shoes and somehow the real essence of any shoe of ours is neglected. Anusha Jain, by being a genius and a perfect daughter with her reviving approach for accessory like socks has not only iterated the fact that it’s high time to give the respect our pair of socks deserve from us and also this brings her father’s age old and shadowed sock brand Bonjour. It was started in 1984 with the motive of feeding onto the traditional use for which socks are meant for.
Miss Jain on being asked how she managed to be such good heir to her father, she said, “In India, it is a tradition that a son takes over the fathers business after he retires, but women are becoming more and more qualified and independent with changing times. I was raised to be ambitious too. So here I am!”
With her fresh instincts and novel outlook Anusha had full faith in her that she would not let her father’s hard work to die out by slowly fading away among the other hi-fi fashion trends.
“The problem was the lack of demand, as we were just another player in a ‘uniform’ (pun intended) market. I had lot of innovative ideas around the products we offer. Socks were never considered a fashion accessory in India. I conducted some research and found there is a huge demand for fashion and style in socks. Thus, I took up the mission of categorizing socks as fashion accessory, of course, with nowhere better to start than our own enterprise. Since I had the platform ready with Bonjour, out of the box designs and innovations in the products was my agenda. I would like to change the way people wear socks from an option to necessity also giving them reasons to flaunt the socks they are wearing.”
We should definitely admire Anusha’s determination as an upcoming businesswoman and a strong daughter.
“Socks are a neglected category, and it was difficult to convince people to spend on socks. Personally, my biggest challenge was to work as my father’s daughter in his organisation. His reputation was at stake at all time, and if I fail, everything he has worked for will be diluted. Of course, being young and inexperienced, I had to face friction from people who were senior to me, and more set in their ways. It was difficult to counter them and make them adapt to cultural changes that I wanted to bring about.” Quite clearly we can feel how even after being one great combination of someone who is a genuine inheritor and also a new thinker, what all difficulties she as a young female had to face.
Her only objective was to make her socks “fashion statements”. “People had to be made aware that cotton is the most comfortable and provides the best value for money, when it comes to socks.” With subject to this viewpoint, Anusha came up with themed versions of best cotton fabric socks , for example Bonjour Bold catchy neons for the trendy youth and cartoon series of Ben 10 and Doraemon for little kids and was actually successful in her endeavors. If not this then bonjourretail.com will give you enough idea how this daughter is putting in all her efforts to keep up his father’s business.
With whatever marketing lessons she learnt from her post grad school, the girl utilized all of them to advertise and market her father’s brand and now Bonjour is no less than a success story with more than 10,000 premium stores inside malls giants across India. Even if you don’t know Anusha personally, you would be proud to know that this girl managed to get 25% growth rate within much less time.
To conclude its better to stick to what Miss Jain has in her mind with all this success coming in her way. She said, “My goal now is to emerge a clear winner. And we will do so by embracing change in real-time, to keep up with evolving trends in design, marketing as well as business development,”
