“As honors graduates in one of the esteemed institutions in Chennai, we were actively encouraged to venture out on our own by the college’s entrepreneurship cell. Thus we, a close group of five friends started a small venture where we upcycled cell phone covers. It became an instant hit with the people and we were thoroughly motivated to make use of our creative genius to try our hand at entrepreneurship. Through the initial phases of brainstorming, we learnt that our interests leaned towards fashion.
We began by designing small pieces of apparel and submitted a formal proposal to our e-cell committee which also prodded us to do more since we had resources we could make use of there as well. However, after graduation, three of our friends had left the venture due to higher education. So when it came down to the two of us, we dove in heads first to equip ourselves completely for the task at hand and began to commence operations; and this was where ‘Fray Label’ was born!
As a startup, we thoroughly believe that ‘One size does not fit all’ and we live to fight against body stereotypes in our own way. We started by designing clothes exclusively for each and every individual and customised it for them. This slowly developed into other forms of upcycling like recycling jeans into bags, fabric into cloth purses, stuffed cushions with upcycled pieces of fabric and so on.
Of the many challenges, the one main thing has been to fight against the mindset of the people against startups. People are of the general opinion that customized clothes are expensive but it doesn’t have to be that way all the time. In the long run, we are also working at starting a sustainable clothing line but looking back, the growth of Fray Label from what it was a year ago has been tremendous; we will continue to work on our cause and help people make more conscious choices in their lives.”