Bright prospects

In the full year of the pandemic, Fabindia saw its operative revenue fall by about a third, which still put it above the Rs.1,000 cr mark. Their profits nosedived and the bottomline turned red, though. It was only to be expected, with many of their 309 stores across the country remaining closed for a significant part of the year. But this has been a small setback in the growth of this 62-year old firm. Started by an American, John Bisell, in 1960 as a home-furnishings exporter, Fabindia today retails fabrics, garments, furniture, foods and personal care products. The idea of the firm is to provide a platform for traditional garment (and handicrafts, furniture, foods) makers. They have been doing it successfully enough to contemplate an IPO; given the choppy state of the stock markets today, that IPO which was scheduled to open on February 27 this year, has been pulled back. 

Chennai's first Fabindia store - for a very long time, the only one in the city - was opened on Woods Road sometime in the 1990s. It was in a building that was built sometime in the early 20th century and had an old-world charm, but also the staid feel that goes with some of such spaces. Over the past 10-15 years, many more outlets were opened in Chennai. 

One such was this one at the junction of TTK Road and Eldams Road. It is a 4-storey building completely dedicated to Fabindia and has all its products, including a cafe on the top floor. Sitting up there, it is a decent view of the roads below, and looking on to the CP Ramaswamy Iyer Road flyover. It is also a nice view from below, once the lights come on. With a lot of glass on its facade, we can look right in to the products on display and the chic people shopping there!

 

Chic house

In 1902, the company founded in 1879 by Alfred Hugh Harman changed its name to that of the town it was based in. The town council objected, saying that merely being the town's biggest employer did not mean the company could automatically take over the town's name. Their objects came to naught, and the Britannia Works Limited became Ilford Limited. In the early 20th century, India was still a large market for British companies. Circa 1915, the city of Madras had an Ilford Company, which was probably bringing in film rolls from the principal's factory at Ilford, Essex. 

There is not much more about the Madras company's history that I have been able to trace. Probably its fortunes rose and fell with its British parent, which, by the 1960s was owned by ICI and Ciba; the Ilford Co., Madras was bought out in 1977 by Saurabh Mehta, who was a distributor for Hindustan Photo Films. That purchase gave Saurabh the ownership of Ilford House, on Woods Road. The building had little going for it, architecturally or aesthetically, in keeping with its function as a storage house for medical X-ray film stock. By 1997, demand for such film had fallen dramatically and a large storage facility made no sense to Saurabh. Cannily enough, he found the perfect buyer; Fabindia, established in New Delhi in 1960, was expanding nationally and it needed space in Chennai. Saurabh realized that Fabindia would be the ideal tenant and struck a deal. 

It is quite counter-intuitive; Woods Road is narrow, crowded and further cramped by haphazard parking. It is not a shopping destination. Maybe that helped, because folks would then not be distracted with other outlets and would shop only at Fabindia. Even though the chain now has several other outlets in Chennai, it is only Ilford House which provides the 'heritage experience'!