Students walk the ramp at a recent fashion show at NIFT. Picture by Rashbehari Das

National Institute of Fashion Technology (NIFT) hosted a symposium on Fashion Management: Scope & Challenges on Thursday afternoon on its Salt Lake campus. The textile and apparel industry in Bengal was the prime focus during the discussion initiated by NIFT to facilitate interaction with the industry.

“This exercise is to assess the situation of the apparel industry in Bengal,” said Bharti Moitra, course co-ordinator of fashion management studies, the department that organised the one-day symposium.

The morning began with a welcome address by Shantmanu, director of NIFT, Calcutta, and went on to the theme address by Preeti Goenka, guest of honour. Preeti spoke about how Stylefile, the city’s biggest fashion event, has evolved and how the industry can tap Bengal’s rich weaving technology and tradition to the full.

The panel comprised Naveen Prakash, executive director of WBIDC, Debashish Sengupta, managing director of ICICI Winfra, Bimal Bhattacharya, vice president (credit) UTI Bank, fashion designer Aveek Bhattacharya, Kaustabh Dasgupta, director, RB Enterprises International Pvt Ltd, and Sanjay Jhunjhunwala, managing director of Turtle Ltd. Also on the panel were S.K. Mall, managing director of Mallcom (India) Ltd, Dr Probal Sengupta, vice president, engineering Alumnus Software Ltd, Arup Dutta, chief executive officer of Tropical Clothing Co Pte Ltd, and Praphul Misra, chief executive officer of Net Carrots Loyalty Services.

Speakers were allotted 10-minute time slots during which they touched upon various topics such as apparel and garment parks, infrastructure needs of Bengal, project financing and emerging trends in fashion.

There were discussions on how to organise an unorganised sector, a perspective of manufacturing and branding, problems and prospects of garment exports from Bengal, radio-frequency identifier, alternative retailing and myths on loyalty programmes and more.

Praphul Misra discussed the winning combinations that make for a perfect loyalty programme and explained the concepts of the right mix of catering to the ego, economic status and emotional needs of a regular customer.

Sanjay Jhunjhunwala’s challenging offer to “start a pilot project on the lines of Zara (Spanish line of garments)” was lapped up by some eager students of NIFT, as was Arup Dutta’s emphasis on a customer being “flesh and blood, and not a mere statistic”. Dutta then went on to explain the “what, why, basis and future” of alternative retailing, explaining how it was all about creating a market for a different product “that has a latent demand and hidden needs”.

Tropical Clothing handed out an award in the alternative retailing category to Jyoti Vimal and a runner’s-up prize to Raja Ram, both students of the institute. Gauri Kumar, director general of NIFT, closed the symposium with her words of encouragement for the designers of tomorrow.