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D’Décor Exports is a premium home furnishings and accessories brand from India and the world’s largest producer of woven upholstery and curtain fabrics. The brand has made great strides in the market for nearly two decades and has grown at a rapid pace. With a loyal customer base, this 17-year-old local brand exports home fabrics to 65 countries across the globe.
Recently, I had the opportunity to speak to Armaan Arora, Director, Business Excellence, D’Decor Home Fabrics Pvt. Ltd, at the company’s three-day FabriCare showcase in Mumbai. The conversation began by asking about the origins of D’Decor. “My mother and father started D’Decor. Ajay Arora is the Managing Director and Simone Arora is the Creative Director. D’Decor is 30 years old. It all started in 1998 with our first booth at HeimTextile, a home furnishings trade fair in Germany. So, I think for the first 10 years, we were focused on getting the products right – going to Italy, buying the designs from Italy, buying the machines, fine-tuning the products. We had a lot of support from the government in setting up our manufacturing base. We had a lot of support from the banks. So, for the first 10 years, we were focused on making European products in India.”
To do this, they leveraged a lot of technology and introduced SAP in 2005. That’s when Ajay Arora came up with the idea of launching a B2C brand in India. “So, we started a distribution company, Home Ideas. That was our goal in year 20 – to build this category brand. One of the big innovations we rolled out was the swatch model, where the retailer doesn’t have stock. As you can see, the swatch book shows the cut length of fabric. That was a game changer. It helped us get buy-in from retailers and we had a lot of partners and dealers who helped us promote the brand across India,” Arora said.
The brand is currently in its 10th year of distribution in India and manufacturing in India.
“We see sales in India as part of the challenge now is expansion — category expansion, brand expansion. As you see today, one of the brands we launched last year is FabriCare. It’s a new brand. With government support, we have set up a new manufacturing plant at a cost of about Rs 100 crore to make blackout curtains,” Arora said.
Any D’Decor consumer would agree that the end-to-end service the brand offers with every purchase makes shopping a breeze. Whether it’s how you choose your fabric or the brand sending you a trailer to measure your purchase, the burden of choosing and paying alone can be overwhelming. We wanted to know if this layer of customer care differentiates the brand from other “DIY” companies in the market. Arora said, “I think there are two channels in every market. One is the ready-made channel, or DIY, where you don’t need a tailor or someone to help you in the middle. The other is the customization channel. I think we deliberately chose to play in the customization channel.”
“Talking about India, there is a big market for IKEA in the world and I think they are offering great value but we are not there,” he added.
I think we play in the customization sector of the market. People really want to spruce up their homes, and sometimes they need help from others, sometimes they need customization, sometimes they need to match colors. I think one of the big assets that India has is its workforce. So, you know, why not leverage our tailor community, our architects, our interior designer community to make life easier, maybe make your home look better, suggest fabrics that are better options. So why do it yourself?
Finally, when asked about lessons he has learnt from starting a business, Arora replied, “I have a short career, so I will just repeat what my parents taught me.” “First, 80% of your business comes from existing customers. 80% of your business is paying customers. So keep them happy and protect your core.” He added, “Second, at least in my opinion, strategy is more important than execution.” “I think the third thing that’s important in any field is grit.
“As an entrepreneur, when you go to work, every day there are seven things that go wrong and three things that go right. So take it to heart, know you can improve, and rise above every problem, and look at every problem from a solution mindset. Those are the three things I want to say,” he concluded.
