To each homeowner his own

There’s no one design that fits all when you talk of home interiors. Which is why reputed brands offer customers services from furniture, furnishings to decorative lighting and modular kitchens. DK Jairath, CEO of Evok, explains why it makes perfect business sense.

Tell us a bit about the genesis of Evok?
EVOK is a fully-owned subsidiary of HSIL, better recognised as the company behind Hind Sanitaryware. HSIL was planning to diversify and add a third dimension to their existing portfolio. So, they did a market survey and found that home retail sector was a largely unorganised sector. They felt that with the expertise they had, diversifying from bathware to home solutions made perfect business sense. Thus, Evok was established four years ago.

How have the four years in the market been? 
When we opened in May 2008, the market was very unstructured. Even the organised market had only three to four big players. Coming from that background, we had clear parameters to establish ourselves as a trusted name. Through this journey of four years, I can safely say that the market, while still largely immature, has shaped up a lot better than how it used to be. Today, the marketing for home retail space is more process-driven, there is a shift in consumers’ perspective and there’s also lot of brand acceptance. Over all, its been very encouraging.

What are some of the observations you have been able to glean from the market, in this time period?
The home retail space is extremely knowledge driven. That said, from experience we see three types of customer behaviour in this space. The first kind are people who are looking to do their new houses. The second type of consumers who come to our store are those who are renovating their homes and the third category are people who looking to do up their homes only for festivals or occasions like weddings. We realised that we could lend end-to-end turnkey solutions to all three types of customers.

Another observation we managed to make was that owing to its unorganised nature, customers had to travel from one shop to another to shop for their requirements. They also did not have access to interior designers who could sit and help integrate it all while doing up their home. That spurred us to set up Evok as a one-stop interior solutions store that is manned by trained interior designers. Everything, from home décor, flooring, bath solutions and services like designing to installation and post-care is part of our offering.

With such an extensive offering, where do you source all the material from?
To meet the extensive categorisation of services, we largely depend on a global source. Customers today want products that are an equal mix of style plus affordability, which is why 70% to 80% of our offerings are globally sourced. We buy from two large markets, namely, South East Asia and Europe. We have invested in factory tie-ups in these regions and we have in vested in a lot of developmental work to ensure exclusivity of products.

Talking about personalised interiors consultation, explain how the process works in your store?
The interiors space is extremely individual and knowledge-driven, by which I mean, every customer comes with his own ideas of what he wants. But while they might seem to know what they want, they don’t have a clear perspective of how to implement their ideas. So, we sit with them, understand what they want and then help them visualise it through 3D software. If there is one constant principle we abide by, it is to ensure there’s a good balance between aesthetics and the budget the customer has allocated. Making every customer’s idea come to fruition might seem challenging but the entire process is really exciting. It’s this force that drives us.