Chumbak might have been named after the most collected item from travels — magnets — but a decade later, it’s evolved into a quirky “design-led lifestyle brand” full of signature colour, feel-goodness and warmth. “The journey has been incredible. Today we have 70 stores across the country with a large presence online as well,” says Vivek Prabhakar, founder and director, Chumbak Design. He now has his eyes set on taking the brand global. In a The Telegraph chat, Vivek recounts how Chumbak was born and how a “consistent” core has taken the brand places.
Patches and planter wraps
Congratulations on a decade of Chumbak. How was it born?
Everywhere Shubhra (Chadda; wife) and I used to travel, we used to bring back souvenirs from each of the countries. For the life of us we couldn’t figure out why India didn’t have any fun souvenirs. That was the original plan... let’s do fun souvenirs in the country. But by the time we got around to sitting and saying what kind of business would we do as well as showing friends and family some of the designs of the initial kind of souvenirs, magnets and keychains, we realised two things. One is that it cannot be a purely knick-knack and souvenir kind of company because there is not much money to be made in that. The second part is that some people would come back and say they would want it on a notebook or a T-shirt. So, Chumbak was more an accessories company at birth.
We did this for about a couple of years. When we used to visit the stores we were selling through and the chatter online used to be similar. Consumers were saying what’s new at Chumbak. They were not really asking for a new category or something but they had bought in to the brand. Clearly we were leaving money on the table. People were willing to spend a lot more money with Chumbak the brand but from the product perspective we were not able to service them because we had a lot of low-priced accessory so to speak.
Then we chalked out a course for the next three years, may be around 2013. We needed to evolve for the consumer and what is the transition going to be from selling knick-knacks and accessories to a larger design-led lifestyle brand and what kind of things does Chumbak has to do to get there.
We adapted in three different ways. One in the design philosophy itself. The designs we had in the beginning were in-your-face India, India-themed so to speak. Over a period of time, consumers are going to get bored of it and a lot of copycats come along. We wanted to make the design philosophy a bit more mature and global. The products also had to change. We had to introduce larger categories. So, we introduced home decor. It’s great to have an autorickshaw magnet, but you cannot put autorickshaw on a plate or sofa. So, the product had to change and the way we sold had to change. It was no longer the smaller kiosks or single-owner stores or the chain stores where we were present, but we had to open our large-format stores, which we started opening up end of 2014.
A couple of years after that we made the next change that was fashion and fashion accessories like bags, wallets and watches. We moved into the Chumbak storytelling way of design where we take different types of themes. We might be doing jungle but might be treating it with an ikat kind of overlay. We have grown into this cult-like brand where consumers love the kind of categories that we do. While we constantly change our visual language, a lot of consumers will tell you they can spot a Chumbak product a mile away. The journey has been incredible.
Tota Bahaar tray
Tell us about the owl motif...
One of our designers did this owl motif back in 2012. It was actually on one product that we put it, a notebook and a mug. Within the first month it became our bestselling product. One of the largest selling category at that time was phone cases and the moment we put it on phone cases, the product became a bestseller. Twenty or 30 per cent of consumers who would buy something new from Chumbak would start off with the owl. We have anywhere between 80-100 different types of owls in products across Chumbak, but the original owl motif has been a bestseller.
In 2020 when we changed the brand identity and introduced a new logo at Chumbak, that’s when we started to own the fact that the owl is part of our brand and that’s when we incorporated it into the logo itself.
We have a design studio in Bangalore and work with about six-eight designers at any given point of time. All come with their own visual language and own styles. A lot of design is data driven. For example, the colour purple doesn’t work at Chumbak! The core DNA is great illustration, design and stuff that is relatable in terms of the content that we use in the design itself.
There is a lot of freshness. How have you retained the youthfulness? Is your team essentially made up of young people?
The average age at Chumbak is 27. It is a young brand and there are constantly new ideas coming in. The design philosophy, the kind of categories we get into and the kind of brand we have built over the years... the base has been that we are fun and happy brand and we would like to bring a bit of joy into everyone’s lives.
Street of Jaipur Kutch cushion cover
Who is your “core target audience”?
Women between 25 and 35. They are well-travelled, know and appreciate good design. What they buy says a lot about them.
Right now, (it’s about) getting through this tough pandemic and then figuring out how do we expand the brand, what categories do we focus on, what are consumers looking for. Our consumers are also evolving. We also need to keep pace with them. In today’s day and age, a lot of our audience is shopping online. It gives us an opportunity to reach every corner of the country. The maximum (of Chumbak) that I have in my house are planters — Vasant Nangia, chief operating officer, Chumbak Design
What kind of buying trends are you seeing?
Over the last two years and accelerated by the staying at home (situation), we have seen home as a category shoot up in terms of contribution to the revenue. We launched an entire range of bed linen in the last quarter, which has been doing really well online. Planters have been doing well for us as a lot of people have got into gardening. Fashion accessories like watches have also seen large growth. We have also introduced precious jewellery, gold-plated sterling silver with gemstones. Wall art has become big with Zoom and video calls. For the first time you have got a window into other people’s houses and they want their backgrounds looking nice.
In the pandemic, sales of laptop sleeves have gone up and people are buying packs of face masks and gifting people. Thirty-35 per cent (at Chumbak) is still gifting.
Bed linen is a hot pick at Chumbak
How big is your personal collection of collectibles?
I started collecting a lot of little crockery from around the world, mugs and plates. I picked up these brass elephants from Coimbatore from an antique place (which I really like).
Vivek’s top three gifting picks from Chumbak
I personally love all the dining options. I recently gifted my parents a whole bunch of plates from Chumbak.
The other thing working for us is bed linen.
Garden and outdoor stuff.
Wall and table decor.
Did you know?
“Chumbak means magnet, but the etymology is chumma + bak, meaning ‘kissing stones’. We got to know about it after we launched the brand,” says Vivek.