Parinita Hendre believes that classics dictate a more time-honored conviction. This is what she claims Burloe is all about, striving for exemplary comfort for her customers’ feet with every pair. The former communication and retail manager states that the company she founded works with the design philosophy, ‘footwear is tasteful without being stuck-up’.
Parinita Hendre doesn’t believe in trends that come with an injunction and an expiry date. She believes that classics dictate a more time-honored conviction. This is what she claims Burloe is all about, striving for exemplary comfort for her customers’ feet with every pair.
The former communication and retail manager states that the company she founded works with the design philosophy that footwear is tasteful without being stuck up, and the shoes Burloe designs are for driven working women. These are the women who understand the importance of perfect fit, the spot-on shape and chic styles that make even an average outfit stand out.
The Kingston University graduate states that her women’s footwear brand is committed to serve with sensible-yet-fun footwear every single time that makes you feel fabulous from the feet up. “Burloe is positioned for the women of today! Yes, this does sound a bit said and done, but when I was researching what shoes women were actually interested in wearing to what are available online or offline there was a huge gap and my whole agenda then became working towards filling that gap. We have just started and plan to go above and beyond to achieve that.”
The Indian landscape of huge innovation and development, especially in the e-commerce sector, and India being a fairly fast growing economy, producing more customers who can afford mid-premium products motivated her to launch Burloe. She stresses, the objective is also to educate the consumers with the products and build them at Burloe.
The thriving Indian e-commerce ecosystem has undoubtedly led to the birth of brands like Burloe, and quite a lot of home-grown brands have taken the online route to make their presence felt as well as to consolidate their footprint. As a result, major ecommerce platforms today have become quite diverse, in terms of products, and brands often find themselves jostling for space. This presence, however, is an addition to a brand’s own exclusive online retail platform. But in a highly competitive ecosystem what matters is how a brand stands out with certain core values and how they are kept intact. Parinita explains, “Firstly, we treat our shoes like products that help us differentiate ourselves from other homegrown Indian brands as we not only look at trends but also at shapes and structure. We don’t believe in seasonal collections but more in weekly drops. From our basic insight on our customers we find them coming back for more variety quite frequently. Secondly, Indian women range from wide to narrow feet and we’d like to offer something for everyone.
Lastly, we believe in providing a service. For example, if you’re unsure of your size you simply have to message or whatsapp us and our customer assist team will get in touch with you promptly to help you with your correct sizing. We want to continue this model as our service will eventually determine a value for our customers in the highly competitive space of fashion ecommerce.”
On the product front, Burloe designs and caters flat, loafer, espadrille and heel, and it is planning to diversify the product range.
For Parinita, the main challenge is pricing. “It’s so heavily discounted throughout the year not only by marketplaces and bigger players but also by other direct-to-consumer brands like us that it becomes very hard to sustain margins and eventually give it back as a value to our customers. Indian market is highly competitive due to the pricing and I am pretty sure most new brands face issues,” says the founder.
Despite the main challenge most brands are accustomed to, she claims that the brand has grown quite consistently, in terms of brand loyalty and through word-of-mouth – which she sees as the brand’s ‘number one key performance indicators’. “We’ve incorporated the growth mindset into our culture and recognize team members who can create more value beyond their job descriptions; this strategy may sound irrelevant in the first year of a business but we believe it will add more value eventually,” elucidates Parinita. “From the business standpoint we’re sending fulfilling 250+ orders from our own website each month and have also launched on Nykaa Fashion very recently. We intend to cross 500 orders per month mark in this financial year.”
The Indian footwear market has been quite tricky, compelling even global brands to tweak their strategies to suit the market. If it is tricky for global majors then it’s trickier for the home-grown brands which have to battle the Goliath. But the positive side of the reality is that the size doesn’t always matter; it’s all about knowing the craft and pursuing it with great intensity and David learning the tricks, and a David like Burloe has learned it.
