Nykd's Preeti Gupta on social taboos around lingerie and more
Preeti Gupta, Business Head, Nykd by Nykaa talks about how many women worldwide are not happy with their breast size and how Nykd is playing a role to contribute to conversations around body positivity.
A lot of D2C brands and brands in online spaces are actually built out as an opportunistic play, which means that you are just hyping up prices and cutting it and it’s not real in that sense. “With Nykd, we really wanted to ensure that this is a brand that we're building for the long haul and the real brand which is being built for consumer love rather than just an opportunistic take. And hence we always have full price sales. We are not discounted, " says Preeti Gupta, Business Head, Nykd by Nykaa and states that Nykd's discount percentage is a single digit.
"This is always a surprise for most people to know in a digital space where discounting percentages are typically between 30 percent and upwards. We've really ensured that even in the brand ethos and these are my favorite lines as well! When we launched the brand it was uh, you know what were the two lines that we would like to really get consumers to know about us was that we don't want to be hyperbolic in our spiel," says Gupta.
In the second part interview with Preeti Gupta, Business Head, Nykd by Nykaa, Storyboard18 digs deeper into the brand's strategies to attract the attention of the Indian woman who thinks the conversation revolving around lingerie is taboo.
Edited excerpts:
Could you elaborate on Nykd’s innovation strategy ?
As an organization, we believe in a strategy called the Hero product strategy which means we want to simplify lingerie for Indian women. In order to keep it simple, it's important to keep the product line simple because if the product line is complicated then it's that much more difficult for the consumer to understand what we are trying to achieve.
In the Hero product category, we have bucketed consumers into many buckets and for every product, we question the unique solution that we are bringing to the table. Given the fact that we are sourced across the world and we have a very strong technical team in house, we are quite obsessed with how we bring this innovation to the consumer in these hero styles.
Once we have identified a product and stated that this is the gap that we did like to address in that gap, we will go back to the vendors. We will get their feedback on what is happening from their end. We will check international trends and design our product accordingly. We are so obsessed with the fit of the products that every product is actually fitted on almost 25-26 consumers before it is launched in different body types. So for example, if you're a 34B, typically 34B will see one kind of 34B, but because we are catering to many different age groups of 34B or body types of 34B, we'll actually try it in many bodies of 34B to ensure that it works for every single consumer consistently.
What kind of marketing and advertising strategies are you guys incorporating?
80 percent of Indian women wear the wrong bras. But how do you actually make that change? We actually have a tech tool which has won many awards over the last two years. Therefore in 12 quick questions, you can actually get to your perfect bra. There's a 99 percent efficacy that has been proven by that tool.
It is also about educating consumers in terms of outerwear, innerwear, and conversation. If you want to go for a marriage and your blouse is thin at the back, then you can wear a low back bra. We have done campaigns around these to spread awareness.
Coming to influencer marketing, we started something called Naked Truth with Bhumi Pednekar in which she's talking about how she's done unconventional things in her life and opening up conversations on getting out of comfort zones. We realized that Pednekar can connect with our audience which includes women who think the subject of lingerie is a taboo.
We also had Anshula Kapoor, who spoke about how she never used to look at the mirror because she has fat fupa - the upper pubic area. She wasn't comfortable with who she was; she was always hiding. She didn't want to look at herself and one fine day, she realized how it's important to just recognize who you are.
Our latest campaign is about women worldwide who are not happy with their breast size. Somebody wants it bigger. Somebody wants it smaller, right? But in reality, one woman's perfect is actually someone else's imperfect. Is there really something called perfect and we at naked actually believe that the answer is no, everybody's beautiful? And, it's only recently that I have started realizing that every curve, every inch of me is breathtaking and just the way I am.
What's in the pipeline going forward for the brand?
We have now got 16 Enterprise Business Objects in a matter of 1-1.5years. We've got 6 stores and franchises. We've got at least 10 more signed up. We've got intrade; We have almost 1700 points of sale now, so I think we want to be where the consumer is and we are already being loved by more than a million women and we are raring to go to get more.
