Brothers Dhruv and Udit Toshniwal started The Pant Project in 2020. At first, the brand was digital-only, offering only custom-tailored trousers to customers. Since then, they’ve turned omni-channel and expanded their offerings within bottom wear to include chinos, jeans, cargo, shorts and more—both customised and ready-to-wear. Having survived their early days at the peak of the pandemic, when people weren’t really wearing pants, Dhruv believes the sky is the limit from here on. He tells us how The Pant Project intends to become a timeless fashion brand led by fabric technology and innovation.
Excerpts from the interview…
Tell us about the insight that birthed the brand and the gap in the market you saw yourselves filling.
My brother Udit and I started The Pant Project in October 2020. We come from a family that’s been in the textile manufacturing business for almost 50 years, so we understood the product and supply chain. I studied finance at Wharton in the US, Udit studied art in Chicago and fashion in New York and Italy. When we came back to India, after having spent six to eight years abroad, we realised there was a gap in the bottomwear market.
You don’t find really high-quality, well-fitted trousers, especially for the Indian body type. So we decided to become the pant connoisseurs and started The Pant Project. We started online right after the first wave of Covid-19 which was probably the hardest time to start a business. Most people were at home and not wearing pants. So from there, there’s been no looking back because we made it through the hardest phase in our early days.
Does the typical customer actually manage to measure themselves right? What has the process of educating them been like?
When we first started, only about 70% of our orders would fit right the first time. Thirty percent would need to get re-alterations, which was a painful process. As we got more data on fit, we got better at getting our customer’s measurements right online. Through data, we gauge patterns of what is most likely to be the fit issue for someone ordering a particular waist or length and other measurements. So, we’re able to adjust the fit of the garment in a way that is more likely to fit them right the first time. Today, about 93% of our orders fit right the first time.
We educate customers on how to measure themselves with robust size guide videos and quiz questions. We also have offline stores where they can come in and get their fit right before they order. Also we’ve solved a lot of fit issues by putting a lot of stretch into our fabrics and having a FlexTech waistband with two inches of stretch. So even after you’ve had a bit of a heavy meal, the pants still fit you.
Theoretically, the problem with doing customised products is the inability to scale. Tell us a bit about The Pant Project’s model and how you have managed to scale.
We did only custom-made pants for the first three years of our existence. Now, we offer both customised and ready-to-wear. The learning has been that there is a set of customers that needs custom fit. But there also is a set of customers that fit a standard size and don’t want to do the personalisation or wait 10 days for their pants. Our business is split pretty evenly across custom-made and ready-to-wear, which makes it scalable. We sell almost 500 pairs of pants a day.
How have customer perceptions and demand changed in the apparel segment? What are some insights that your brand has managed to leverage?
When we started the brand, custom-made was typically associated with formals and smart casuals. Now, customers have been moving towards casual and athleisure clothing too. So we’ve expanded our product range to include jeans, chinos, cargos, shorts and joggers.
There is a trend moving towards more comfortable, casual and versatile clothing—bottomwear that is basic but can be paired with many different top-wear items. About 50% of our sales happen in three colours—black, navy and grey. At the same time, we focus on new styles, textures, cuts and fits. For example, our six-pocket cargo pants are great for travel. And Jeanos are a category we’ve engineered, which is a mix between jeans and chinos. So they’re casual, but they can also be worn to work or for an occasion.
Sustainability is also increasingly important to customers in India. We use recycled polyester from PET plastic bottles in our fabrics and BCI (Better Cotton Initiative) certified organic cotton.
How is the demand shaping up in the smaller cities and towns of the country?
Tier 2 cities contribute to almost half of our business with 40% coming from them and 60% from Tier 1s. I think what a customer is fundamentally looking for is a brand they can rely on for good fit and fabric, a product that is durable and something that they’d be proud to wear. And that’s what we’re going for.
The Pant Project is a digital native with an expanding offline presence. Why was it important to build that out and how do you look at expansion in the future?
Offline is important for the touch and feel of the garment in apparel as a category. We opened our first store in January of 2024, just a year ago, and we’ve opened seven stores since. The roadmap is to grow our offline store presence to 25 or 30 stores across different states soon.
What have been the most effective advertising and marketing strategies to reach out to potential customers?
Instagram has been a massive channel for us since we work a lot with influencers. We’ve been a digital native brand so it is a mix of Google, YouTube, Facebook and Instagram ads, as well as organic content.
As we grow, offline events and activations in local communities are also going to be important. The Mumbai Marathon is coming up on the 19th of January, and our Hughes Road store happens to fall on the route of the marathon. We’ve been handing out free water with The Pant Project branding on it in the mornings leading up to the race and we’ll be doing it on the day of the marathon too. We were also part of IIT Bombay’s Mood Indigo festival last month.
How do you envision the future of the company? Do you plan on moving into garments beyond pants?
We want to continue to be known for one thing. Just the way Nike is known for their sneakers but sells many other things, we want to be known for pants and there will come a time when we will sell more than that.
In apparel, there are a lot of brands that customers can choose from. So really standing out as the experts in one category is something we aim to do. I think having that clarity is rare in this world where everyone is trying to do everything.
