Dresses with pockets – sounds like the perfect gift to yourself, doesn’t it? To make this wish come true, JHOP, a product of the pandemic has the perfect spell! It is a clothing brand that produces dreamy dresses with, get this right, pockets! The materials are sourced across the different south Indian states such as Tamil nadu, Karnataka, Andhra Pradesh and so on. Although its production is based in Coimbatore, logistics is handled from Chennai. The founders of this quirky and much-needed startup for all the ladies out there, Anupama and Anisha expressed about their journey so far, in an exclusive interview with News Karnataka.
The first step
Anisha Gopinath & Anupama Srinivasan are ‘mompreneurs’ and co-founders of JHOP. Anisha was a communications professional, handling clients who were mainly in the tech space. After her MBA in Symbiosis International University, she gained over 7 years of experience in the field of Public Relations. Anupama was handling MSME sales for top banks like Citi and IDFC. She finished her MBA in IBS Bangalore and joined the Banking sector to pursue a career in Marketing & Sales.
Anupama, who currently works from Chennai and Anisha from Belgium always stay connected over WhatsApp groups and video calls. “It took a pandemic for us to realize that distance doesn’t matter, as long as there is passion,” they said. Maintaining a decade of friendship, Anisha and Anupama had their first children around the same time, and developed JHOP during their maternity break!
Necessity is the mother of invention
In conversation about their brainchild, the ‘mompreneurs’ explained, “it is quite simple – we needed dresses with pockets. It was over lunch in 2016, we realized that we had to find a place to keep our belongings, even in public restrooms. We understood why our moms waited for our dads to wash their hands and come back to take their turns to wash their hands in restaurants – someone had to safeguard their precious handbags.”
While this need was definitely a root cause, the mothers maintained that the real inspiration is their daughters. “We wanted to show them that if we need something, we have to work on the solutions ourselves rather than waiting or focusing on whom to blame,” they added.
What is JHOP?
The etymology of the word ‘JHOP’ comes from the much common reference to pockets in Tamil and many other Indian languages. In Kannada, we say, ‘Jhobu,’ and in ‘Jaeb,’ in hindi. The founders revealed that JHOP was launched to work towards fashion equality. “While women and ‘dress wearers’ have been depending on bags and people with functional pockets to keep their belongings, men are able to fit not only theirs, but our belongings as well,” they said.
This disparity in fashion is so common for people who wear women’s clothes. You don’t have to look far to find Twitter-rants, memes, articles and videos in which people are either complaining about not having pockets or rejoicing over ‘dress with pockets.’ The founders of JHOP wanted to bridge this gap.
With the introduction of JHOP, the founders aim to not only provide clothes with functional pockets, but also empower the consumers to understand what they are capable of once we have taken the weights of their phones and wallets off of their hands. “If headphones can be hands-free, why not women?” they explained.
Speaking about the uniqueness of their brainchild, Anupama and Anisha disclosed that their USP is simple – ‘to normalize pockets.’ They informed that a lot of brands have started incorporating pockets in women’s clothing. Nevertheless, it is nearly not enough to bridge the existing gap between men’s and women’s pockets. “Research by The Pudding, confirms what we have known for a very long time – women’s clothes have significantly smaller pockets than men’s, rendering them almost entirely impractical. This research found that on average, the pockets in women’s jeans were 48 per cent smaller and 6.5 per cent narrower than those in men’s jeans!” they cited. Therefore, at JHOP, they wanted to lessen the otherwise growing disparity in the fashion scene. “Our pockets are as functional as men’s pockets and can hold a mobile phone, keys, lip balm, sanitary napkin, a small wallet, mask, small sanitizer bottle, kajal and even a small chocolate bar – all your basic essentials,” the mompreneurs contended.
Some stumbling blocks
Pandemic definitely proved to be fruitful for Anupama and Anisha as they could come up with the idea of JHOP. However, with the pandemic came in the mode of online communication as an inevitable part of life. Speaking on the same, the founders confessed that initially it was quite difficult to manage everything virtually. “We started around the time of the first wave of COVID-19. It delayed things a lot for us, since we kept waiting for the lockdown to lift and the pandemic to end. Once we realised that is never going to happen, at least in the near future, we decided to make distance work to our advantage. We coordinated with vendors online and sent couriers back and forth – the internet was our biggest friend through this all,” they narrated. They frankly mentioned that they have invested all their savings towards JHOP. While a few people thought that it was irresponsible to use up the money during a pandemic, especially now that they are new parents, they truly believed in their idea. Despite the backfoots on various aspects, Anupama and Anisha mentioned that they were grateful for each day since it brings new insights. “This learning is still helping us to stay close with our families, and at the same time focus on our passion, while still living continents apart,” they noted positively.
The pandemic’s effect
The continuous lockdowns elicited by the Coronavirus induced pandemic brought a lot of loss to many startups, the corporate sector and so on. It inevitably affected JHOP too. During lockdown, their vendors had to shut down and were still figuring out ways to go online. “But they adopted fast and how! It is truly our vendors’ and tailors’ fast internet adoption that majorly helped us,” they said. The founders’ focus now is to stay afloat through the pandemic and find ways to work in the new normal. Pandemic did increase their costs majorly – raw materials like textile prices have increased tremendously. “We try to compensate with travel costs – our tailors now work very well over zoom. We meet in person only if absolutely required, this not only reduces the cost, but also reduces covid risk,” the founders said.
Pillars of support
Anupama and Anisha are toddler mothers now, but when they ideated JHOP, their babies were very little and expectedly dependent on their mothers. “From driving us to various places, taking care of our little ones’ needs when we had to be away for meetings and fitting sessions to helping us to set up a website, our family has been our biggest cheerleaders. Without them, JHOP would definitely have taken a little longer to come into existence,” they expressed.
Inevitable competition
The pandemic has brought all the customers online. “Nonetheless, the challenge is that bigger brands with bigger marketing budgets have also started focussing on their online sales, making it really difficult for us to stand out. Fashion industry is already cluttered – from the biggest brands to thrift shops, everyone is now online and spending their entire efforts to drive sales online. It is still one of the biggest challenges for us to stand out online,” they claimed.
Diluting the competitive atmosphere, loyal and happy customers of JHOP tag them in memes, posts and reels that address the topic of pockets in women’s wear. “It makes us feel less anxious and better – that people have started equating dresses with pockets to JHOP India. This has definitely helped us keep ourselves on our toes,” they revealed.
Breaking the glass ceiling
In conversation about dealing with conservative mindsets that can often push one back, Anupama and Anisha disclosed that they did face a lot of comments about being mothers who are starting a business. They asserted that it was rather challenging to consider them officially and seriously since many believed that this venture was nothing but a hobby. “Not just the society, but also a few vendors who we met initially had apprehensions working with women entrepreneurs who sometimes carried their little babies to shopping sprees & fitting appointments. We could see them having a conversation with our husbands, while we were the ones asking them the questions,” they added.
Fortunately, the founders got ahold of vendors who saw beyond these patriarchal roles and recognised them for what they really were – passionate entrepreneurs. “And it has been wonderful to work with them since,” they said. Despite the regressive outlooks on gender roles that the society believes to no longer impose, you will find many instances that shall substantiate otherwise. “It is quite disturbing to see people in any industry not taking women entrepreneurs seriously, even after so many of us have broken the glass ceiling. It was, to be honest, exhausting to have to explain that we were the owners of the business and the men present with us were just there for company. But our hope is that it will change soon, it absolutely has to,” the mompreneurs asserted.
What’s next?
Speaking of future endeavours, JHOP founders revealed that they always joke about going to Shark Tank, and having one of the sharks to invest in JHOP to take it global. “Our ten-year plan for JHOP is to take it to the global market. While being online can easily enable us to reach global markets, our aim is to be able to connect with women from different countries and cultural and social backgrounds. It would be fun to have Billie Eilish wear JHOP someday, wouldn’t it?” a hopeful Anupama and Anisha signed off with that hanging question.
For more, visit: jhopindia.com/
