So, would you like to try it on?

Neeraj Bagga

Tribune News Service

AMRITSAR, JANUARY 30

A city-based factory is manufacturing deluxe shirts which are sold between Rs20,000 and Rs75,000 per piece in retail to first-world countries on demand.

Considered among the world’s costliest shirts, mostly sold in Europe and the US, a majority of these are single needle and manually sewn shirts. So, no automation is involved. Its clientele include veteran cricketer Sachin Tendulkar, the football team of Netherlands, sports, Hollywood and Bollywood stars, industrial tycoons who frequent Savile Row, a market in London celebrated for selling bespoke men apparel.

The factory is registered under the brand name ‘100 Hands’ in the Netherlands.

It is being run by brothers Akshat Jain and Ankit Jain. Akshat, MBA graduate from Rotterdam School of Management, had gone to study in the Netherlands in 2006. He married a Dutch woman named Varvara and settled there and subsequently floated the company.

Headquartered in the Netherlands, the company has its only manufacturing unit on the outskirts of the holy city, being looked after by Ankit. “Manufacturing was started with five tailors and now it has 140 employees, including 40 tailors, 20 experts for manual stitching and 10 work as cutters and pattern masters.”

Material world

Material and accessories are imported from known brands of different countries. Premiere segment interlining and thread are imported from Germany, buttons are hand-rolled in Italy and these are made of mother of pearls, pashmina and cotton fabric from Italy, Switzerland and the UK and denim from Japan. Shirts from these materials are already being manufactured in these developed nations. However, what stands out to locally manufactured shirts is minute care being taken at every stage of its preparation.

Being a bespoke shirt manufacturing unit, the work starts by preparing body graphs of the customer. Many individual traits are taken care of even before stitching. Hence, patterns specifically designed for that person is prepared. It offers a unique wearing experience and to develop that it takes a lot of time. Not only stripes or pattern are matched on shirts from all sides, including front, back, shoulders, sleeve, and 360 degree waist. Not all well-known regular brands go into such specifics.

For this, Ankit says that there is a huge production loss and not only it is time-consuming and number of people employed are huge in comparison to the production can be achieved. “Despite employing 140 persons the unit is manufacturing between 60 and 70 pieces per day,” he revealed.

A shirt is not entirely made on a machine and many parts of it are hand-made like button holes, each of them take at least 45 minutes to be prepared. Otherwise on a machine it can be done in minutes. He claims that most of the luxury brands go for 16 to 18 stitches per inch (SPI) while his company does 23 to 25 SPI. Starting retail price of a shirt from this factory is Rs20,000 and highest is at Rs75,000. The Jain family has been in the yarn business for the past 160 years and Akshat and Ankit are the sixth generation who preferred to diversify.

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