Lankan-designed swim wear to hit Indian shores
The local fashion industry has taken a progressive step forward moving into the Indian subcontinent with Sri Lankan designs to flavour the swim wear appeal. Ajai Vir Singh, a pioneer of the Colombo Fashion Week is now looking at making Sri Lanka the Asian capital of swim wear by looking at grabbing the large market share of about 120 million, under 25 year-olds in the Indian cities. Line Aqua branded swim wear designed by a team of 10 Sri Lankan designers are looking at producing items to hit the Indian and Sri Lankan markets.
“Every tourist coming to Sri Lanka has to buy swim wear but there is no retail outlet,” in the country, Mr. Singh explained adding that this is the market that they would be tapping on in future through this new range of products. He noted that designing swim wear was something that should come naturally for Sri Lankans as they are exposed to the environment that calls for the popularity of the garment. Currently, he explained with no organized establishment for this kind of product range Sri Lanka will be coming up with a ‘swim wall’, in locations like ODEL and PR at Horton Place where foreign visitors and locals patronize.
Swim wall would be made known globally through its branding on the online portals that could market this range to a wider audience, he noted.
In this regard, Mr. Singh is in talks with a couple of online portals to be used as a marketing tool to sell their merchandise from Sri Lanka. The method this product would work is by getting the designers to design the swim wear and MAS Holdings through its brand label Line Aqua would produce these units at the factory which has a capacity of 90,000 pieces daily. Designers were selected by invitation since this is a technically intricately designed garment.