Ayush Agarwal and Nihar Gosalia were working at Amazon and TCS when Nihar realised that bamboo fabric was quite an unexplored segment in the Indian textile industry. When Nihar shared this with Ayush who worked at Amazona and had seen the potential and growth of online selling, realised that bamboo fabrics would do quite well in the D2C online channel.
Mush Apparel, based out of Ahmedabad sells bath towels, face towels, bath sets, and socks made from bamboo fabric on Amazon, Flipkart, Myntra, Tata Cliq and multiple other online e-commerce stores. In the last 12 months, the company has made record sales of Rs 7 crore and aims to reach Rs 12 crore in this year.
The linens are made out of bamboo viscose and their products largely use a 70-30 blend of bamboo and cotton. The sustainable fashion industry doesn’t entirely withhold the promise that it makes. Multiple brands promote their clothes stating that they are made out of bamboo when in reality they may only have been dyed in bamboo charcoal. While quite many brands use a 40-60 blend of bamboo and cotton.
The cloth definitely aids the agenda of providing sustainability to the environment and is viewed as an alternative to cotton or polyester fabrics. Bamboo requires relatively little water and resources to grow. It does make use of pesticides and is highly biodegradable.
The company was started with Rs 5 lakh savings invested by the founders. They started out with going out to local factories and delivering yarn which would be transformed into the final product. They made their first batch of 110 towels and posted them on Amazon. They got sold out in 30 days. The company later decided to make their product a premium offering and offered sets in three different price ranges, Rs 1,899, Rs 1,499, and Rs 1,300.
The company however faces a challenge since their products are niche and they are quite controlling of the manufacturing process. Their lead lies between three to four months which leads to a shortage in raw materials and stockouts. Moreover, the pandemic definitely made their situation much more difficult.
The global ethical fashion market is expected to grow from $4.67 billion in 2020 to $5.84 billion in 2021 based on a ResearchAndMarkets report. The company definitely fits in and makes an attempt at making the environment a lot more sustainable and eco-friendly.
