Batting for fashion

Yudhajit Dutta, an IPL marketing manager, organised an unexpectedly successful city-centric show, Kolkata Fashion Week

Excluding the models who frequent the club-house stands and after-match parties, cricket and fashion much little in common. Not for Yudhajit Dutta. The brains behind the first Kolkata Fashion Week (KFW), one of India’s first city-centric fashion shows that was held between April 2-5, he is better known as the marketing agent of Indian Premier League team Kolkata Knight Riders in 2008. This year, he will also be managing commercials and sponsorships for the Chennai Super Kings.

“At the end of the day it's all about entertainment,” he said.

For him, managing the marketing of Kolkata Knight Riders in 2008 was a crash course in business management. “More than anything else, it taught me sports and celebrity management,” he recalled.

Not least of the spin-offs from his cricket experience was providing Dutta access to contacts that he leveraged for KFW, which managed to make a mark despite “fashion week fatigue” (three were held in Delhi before that) and the slowdown.

The event recorded footfalls of 2,000 to 2,500 everyday. “We even had to put up a screen outside the venue so that the mad rush could be controlled, and people who could not find a place inside could watch the show from outside,” said Dutta.

To sponsor the event Dutta managed to rope in Kingfisher, Oh! Calcutta, The Park, The Telegraph, Zoom, NDTV, Star Jalsha, Channel 10, Big FM, MSN, Pepsi and Costa Coffee.

“You can calculate how well your management skills pay off once the revenues start flowing in,” he said.

So what kind of revenues did KFW earn? Dutta isn’t talking numbers. “Well, this is the first edition, so business prospects may not be that great for many designers. But it helped weavers with awareness building, and also helped some designers showcase their best and affordable collection in Kolkata.”

Dutta said the idea of organising a city-centric fashion show was to showcase design talent from Bengal, some of whom are prominent names in the national fashion business. Also, there are weavers and international buyers who swear by traditional traditional Bengali art.

Despite being a narrowly focused event, Dutta managed to bring together names like Rohit Gandhi and Rahul Khanna of Cue, Gauri and Nainika Karan, Wendell Rodricks, Zubair Kirmani, Anjana Bhargav, Shane and Falguni Peacock, Manoviraj Khosla, Narendra Kumar and Kolkata-based designers Mona-Pali, Dev n Nil, Abhishek Dutta and Sharbari Dutta, among others.

Given the costs of organising the show – about Rs 5 crore – and the fact that KFW attracted 15 national designers, Dutta is planning a second edition in September and is scouting for international tie-ups “to make KFW more contemporary”.

“We had 30 or 40 buyers for Kolkata Fashion Week. Some are single buyers, but many are from the US, Sri Lanka and other countries,” he said.

Meanwhile, with the second edition of IPL a few days away, he’ll be batting on another business track for the next few weeks.