Recreating families

Wolfram Hail, President Asia Pacific, Esprit, talks about Esprit’s association with SOS and the upcoming children’s village in Alibaug.

Please elaborate on Esprit’s association with SOS in India.
The association between SOS and Esprit started about four years ago when Esprit began to fund projects around Delhi. SOS Kinderoff International is a not-for-profit organisation that was founded in Austria, which took care of orphans in Europe after the war. Today SOS is present in 132 countries including India. Having set up more than 30 villages across India, SOS has started work on a new children’s village in Alibaug. This project is fully funded by Esprit. Actually, the idea came from a decision taken last year by our chairman, Heinz Krogner. Here in Alibaug, Esprit would fully fund the creation of a SOS children’s village — buy the land, pay for construction and provide funds to operate the village for the first few years.

Has CSR been at the core of Esprit’s philosophy?
Esprit was founded in San Francisco in 1968. The founders wanted to do something different and started this fashion company and since then Esprit has come a long way and has grown into a corporation with 3.2 billion euros in sales in the last financial year. All through the years Esprit has been connected to the youth and the young spirit. In fact our brand stands for good vibes and a pro-life attitude. The founders, who are now no longer with the company, were environmentally conscious and socially active. Thus being socially responsible has been in our DNA since inception. Suffice to say, it is an integral part of our work. Although we don’t really talk about our socially responsible initiatives, our social compliance department tirelessly works behind the scenes to ensure that we are compliant socially as well as environmentally.

How different is the SOS model of creating villages?
SOS believes in recreating families. That’s why they don’t call it an 'orphanage', which is a ‘no’ word in their dictionary. What they do is create villages. These villages consist of anywhere between four to 12 houses and every house is run by a mother who has eight to 12 children. She brings up these children just as a mother would. There is also a man around the village for any administrative and managerial assistance. The village also has counsellors, since most of the children have suffered some sort of trauma. SOS does not isolate the village from the society. SOS sends their children to local schools to ensure that a local connection is maintained. The idea is to make the children independent. The children are given adequate vocational training to prepare them for a self-reliant life ahead.

With burgeoning middle class how do you view India’s potential as a consumer market? Did you adequately leverage your partnership with Madura?
We were very lucky in a way that we found the right partner in Madura Garments. To be sure, things started off on the right foot. We see a tremendous growth potential in India. The country is in a change mode and the growing Indian affluent consumer segment is a factor that we cannot ignore. We have seen how quickly we have grown in China and potentially India could be a market where China is today. At Esprit, we place a tremendous premium on getting the process right. And one of the key elements in that process is maintaining an intense relationship with Madura Garments. From a market coverage perspective, the idea is to spread your grid, fully develop it and then secure it. For instance in Shanghai, we have 87 points of sale for a city of 15 million people. In Beijing, it’s about 60. In Hong Kong, we have less points of sale but all the stores there are free standing stores. In India, we are looking at increasing our presence in the near future.