The Story

 

We are not going to make this the standard story format you read across most brands on the internet. Rather, let us give you real examples and details about how we have been institutionalised to do things a certain way.  

P3 India is Calcutta's oldest hosiery brands. In the 1954 one of our first products were socks. At that time, there were no automatic machines. Everything was handheld. It involved grit and perseverance to make them. We made sure as a brand that we had to use the right materials. In the textile industry, materials consume 55-65% of the product value. If we did not focus on this, no matter the craftsmanship, the product would be substandard. That was the first step. Get the basics right. The end result was that as a customer you got socks that were perfect in shape and made with quality yarn. It was never about catering to everyone in the market because quite frankly hand manufacturing socks give you a low yield in production. However, the rationale was simple. If you give your products to 5% of the total market, make sure those customers get a product that will stand out in terms of quality, feel and durability. Brands are built on the whispers in the hallway not only huge marketing budgets (this helps though)

We do not bulk produce products to rack products on the shelves. We're quite obsessive about details, fits & cuts. Our design team spends months on products, samples, making them, testing them to see how they react to different situations. Once we made a track pant and tested them in this way. One of our executives went home and wore it for 2 days, washed it and then again wore it for another 3 days before finalising his feedback. Another executive, wore it and went running to test how sweat absorbent and heavy the product would be. We learnt a lot from the "trying and testing" process and have had to figure how to do this and manage our entire supply chain from yarn to fabric. Textiles production are an integrated process. It starts from yarn, which is then knit, dyed and delivered for cutting. If you have a delay in 1 department, the chain gets affected. It involves a lot of issues and tasks, but we only know one way - to grind, to work and figure out for ourselves instead of following the market. 

Deadlines are not our strong suit. Have we missed deadlines ? Yes. Is it our fault. Yes. Along with this perseverance and curiosity, one thing which one innately comes up is stubbornness. Being stubborn is a very fine line and must be balanced with rationality. However, this is far easier said than done. Once we made a product that was really appreciated by our customers. It was loved so much that we use to get enquiries regarding its availability despite it not being season appropriate (it was a winter product) 2 months before the season came, we tried to get the materials for manufacturing. For some reason, due to infrastructure issues and the pandemic, our knitting partners could not maintain the same blend. We cannot tell you how many samples we rejected. At this point, the smart ones would have made the products with a new blend and inflated the price. Us ? We did not make it. Did we receive a backlash? Yes. Few customers told us they lost faith in our production capabilities. We understood. We had let them down. But, it was hard to give customers product B, when they loved us for product A. At the end of the day, the customer is your priority. It seemed unethical to sell them something else. 

P3 since 1954 has stood for Perfect stitch, Perfect knit, Perfect finish. This ethos to do things to the best of our ability and try and be perfect is what is ingrained in our process. Perfection is a hard game to play. Are we perfect ? Absolutely not. But we strive to be - that makes the difference. This fuels our new innovations towards sustainable fabrics, better patterns and developing custom blends that are tried and tested. At the end of the day, wherever you put on a P3 product, be it at office (now at home) or for play, comfort and feeling happy is everything. 

We are quite bold about our products. We have a 15 day no terms included, return policy and we take full accountability for our products. We remember once being on call with a customer and he asked us "What is your return policy if I do not like the product?" Our support team associate responded on these lines. "If you do not like a thread in the product, you can return it and we will refund you 100%" - any complaint that you give us, is taken very seriously because we believe in one thing. You may or may not buy from us and that is completely okay. But we will not wrong you, no matter the circumstances. We at P3 take full accountability for our actions and decisions. That customer bought a product from us in 2018 February and is a P3 regular since.

Once we made a batch of pants for our customers. It took immense groundwork to make sure the end product was exactly how we wanted it. We were happy with the end result. After pre-sales our stock stood at 34% (left). 10 days post delivery, few of our customers gave us some valued feedback. We cannot explain how foolish it was for us to over-see this thing. Imagine you buy a car, you fill up oil, you get it shined, you sit, but you forget your keys. It gave us a lot of perspective about not only making the product we wanted, but also to consider the the little nuances of things we always felt we considered. Nobody is perfect, but what we realised that day is that we cannot get complacent even if we ended up making a product that we love. There is always room for improvement and it could have been better. The second lot that was already set for production was edited and we fixed the minor issue. That item is one of our best-sellers today. 

As we grow further into the future, our team will keep adding stories to this story page. Stories, experiences are not a one time thing. They evolve as the brand grows. We hope you will join us on this journey to be better everyday and as always thank you for reading till here. We are grateful for your time.  

Much Love,

The Team