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its own retail presence. It was in 2007 that current company
president, Sateesh Jadhav (Raghu’s son-in-law), asked Vivek
Gaitonde to come on board and help him revive the brand.
From 2007 until 2010, Gaitonde had one store of its own
and a presence in around 50 other retail outlets across
India. “Selling through other stores didn’t make sense,”
Vivek Gaitonde says now, “because we were giving away a
huge margin. We had hit a roadblock. There had been a
slight change in the product mix and young guys didn’t
know us, while older guys wanted the classic Gaitonde, and
soon we went down to one showroom.”
Having absorbed this new set of lessons, the company
has decided that its future lies in being one of the first
footwear firms in India to offer made-to-order shoes. It is
importing electronic scanning technology from Europe to
allow it to take the most accurate measurements possible of
a client’s feet. Gaitonde will make a last for each of its
clients’ feet, left and right, because as in other markets
Indian consumers can easily have one foot five or even ten
millimetres longer than the other. It will modify the patterns
in its catalogue to each foot and make the shoes the
customer wants, and make them fit exactly. There will be
customisation in design, colours and shapes too.
This service will become available during the first half of
this year and customers can expect to pay around $125
per pair for “the first level” (a particular colour of a
particular model) of customisation. Fully made-to-order
shoes will start at around $300, rising to about $1,200 for
the most special shoes in the range, with everything made
to measure and cordovan leather, from horse hide, as the
raw material.
In addition to the store the company has now in a smart
district of Chennai, Gaitonde intends to open one new
boutique this year and two next year. Hyderabad and
Bangalore will be two of the venues, but a decision has still
to be made on whether the third of the new stores will be
another outlet in Chennai or a store in Mumbai. Contacts
that Sateesh Jadhav has been building up in the global
industry for the last 20 years allow Gaitonde to have access
to the highest-quality raw materials: French calf leather
finished in Italy, ostrich leather from South Africa, salmon
leather from contacts in Germany and the high-end
cordovan leather mentioned above from Italy or Spain. Sole
leather comes from Argentina.
“We may carry some ready-made shoes to use up leather
we have invested in, but customised and bespoke shoes is
really all there is going to be now,” Vivek Gaitonde
continues. “We don’t have our own tanneries any more and
we are going to concentrate on sourcing high-end leathers
as finished, or perhaps crust.” The idea behind buying some
crust, to have it finished in tanneries in India, is linked to
colour preferences in the local market. There are brogues in
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ONLY THE BEST WILL DO
MAY/JUNE 2012 | www.footwearbiz.com
Gaitonde imports all its leather from high-end tanneries in
Europe and knows its customers understand the difference in quality.
PHOTO CREDIT: GAITONDE