Mother Earth – Back to Nature

Industree and the Future Group recently launched Mother Earth, an 11,000 square feet flagship store in the centre of Bangalore’s cosmopolitan residential areas Indiranagar and Koramangala Intermediate Ring Road. The store has a wide range of carefully selected merchandise that helps build environment and social sustainability under the categories of home, apparel and food. Mother Earth sources a large part of its merchandise from rural producers and fair trade partners and thus encourages green, artesian skills, which eventually help in providing non-farm based incomes to its rural masses.

The exterior cladding of red-Sal wood of the store is one of the arresting design features, which attract the attention of the shopper as soon as he/she approaches the outlet. Apart from being a cheaper alternative to the composite aluminium which is mostly used by the builders, this red-sal wood is grown in plantations and secondary forests and therefore, does not contribute to deforestation.

The east façade of the building and the clear-window-glass allows for a plenty of natural light to stream into the shop and thus reduces the need for artificial lighting. Open-able windows in the south and west facades give ample opportunity for cross ventilation inside the outlet, and thus not only lower the need for air-conditioning, but most importantly make the shop naturally ventilated and aired.

The rough slate flooring, sustainable wood fixtures and raw MDF finished with wax/ linseed oil is aesthetically designed across three floors. The ground floor houses organic food, personal care products, men’s apparel and gifts. The first floor is dedicated to women and youth and includes apparel, accessories and jewellery. The second floor, apart from having an extensive selection of home décor and linen, also includes a small café where shoppers can lounge around with organically-prepared snacks and hot/cold beverages.

Conversational in nature, the in-store signages focus on sharing experiences of consumers and the choices they make, rather than announcing the benefits to the producers and the environment. Skills, materials, crafts, organic food and innovations are all explored through dialogues that feature through the store. A material gallery showcases craft skills from across the country and the heritage section features floor tiles made in natural materials.

To lower their carbon-footprint imprints, a conscious effort has been made to source materials from areas in close proximity– for instance, the stone is from nearby Hoskete and glass from Chennai.

In response to a query as to what was the inspiration behind the Mother Earth Store, Neelam Chhiber, managing director of Mother Earth, said, “INDUSTREE is dedicated to providing rural livelihoods in India through the artisanal sector, producing contemporary products. It has a for-profit design, distribution, retail and export model, while the production base is in the process of being converted to a producer owned base.”

“The producer company base is being coordinated by the not-for-profit Industree Crafts Foundation. It is envisaged that eventually an artisanal MFI would be seeded to fund the working capital requirements of these companies. MFIs globally, are currently highly localised, while markets are highly globalised. The current strategy being employed is the conversion of the for-profit brand entity, into becoming part producer owned, while the production base belongs proportionally, more to producers. This is the best self-empowerment tool, eventually ensuring producers move up the value chain, towards higher wages, with the help of self governance on quality and productivity issues, extremely crucial in this sector,” he added.

According to Chhiber, Mother Earth is being promoted so as to mainstream this thinking within the Indian consumer, so he /she comes of age, being provided with a conscious consumption source. What better than to link these principles which are green in their thinking to green products, products those are good for the producers as well as the environment, he asks. “There can be no green movement in India unless it looks at social improvements. Mother Earth aims to do just that. Keeping this in mind, Industree was moved to approach Future Group to take a stake in it, to enable it to compete with other players in modern retail. This partnership is sure to make Mother Earth a strongly performing brand.”

Mother Earth, Bangalore

Designer: Jacob Matthew, Idiom
Architecture and Facades: Wooden cladding
Fixtures: Dovetail/ Inhouse
Flooring: Slate sourced locally
Furniture: Inhouse / Dovetail – MDF waxed
Lighting: Natural light supplemented by CFL, CDMT
Mannequins and Forms: Made inhouse in cane
External Signage: Sunboard
Internal Signage – Screen printed MDF; Printed paper graphics mounted on MDF
POS equipment: Software – Shoper 9; Hardware -- Acer

Merchandise
Mother Earth’s eclectic range of products includes organic and natural foods, home and personal care, gifts, home decor and apparel. These are all sold under sub-brands of Earth Home, Earth Food and Earth Fashion.

Besides a large number of the products being designed in-house, or in collaboration with craftsmen, the store is also the umbrella for a lot of other NGOs, studios and craftspeople who have their own designs and merchandise.

Earth Home works with traditional artisans and craft skills. This sub-brand helps to redesign existing products and allows them to enjoy a natural synergy within a contemporary, urban living environment. Wide range of products for the living room, dining room, bed room, knick-knacks (traditional gold leaf painted marble), furnishings (appliqué worked, block-printed and fine kantha embroidered bed covers and cushion covers), curtains, crockery(hand-painted ceramic tableware), toys (natural lacquer coloured wooden toys and games, made with palm leaves) accessories and gifts are included under the Earth Home sub-brand.

Earth Food includes a wide variety of natural and organic cereals, lentils, flour, spices, dry-fruits, snacks and even vegan ready-to-eat. On offer are original mixes like the Kancheepuram idli (traditional ingredients are blended to create idlis that bring home the traditional taste of Kancheepuram). This sub-brand also extends to a range of organic teas, coffees, baby food, and even herbal and natural home care and personal care products.

Earth Fashion is all about eco-friendly style, comfort and beauty. The Earth Fashion range gives the environmentally-aware-consumer the option of blending traditional weaves and prints with contemporary styling and silhouettes (for eg, Block prints in tunics, conventional handloom ikkats in office wear, bohemian Moroccan pants in traditional prints etc). Apart from a large variety of garments available from natural fibres – 100% cotton (even 100 percent organic-cotton, Zeme), linen, handloom or hand-block-printed, or hand-embellished manufactured by SHG’s NGO’s and rural artisans, this sub-brand also includes precious, semi-precious and fashion jewellery.

All products available carry forward the ethos of the store; products sourced and developed are natural, healthy and cost-effective and provide opportunities to the rural community. To facilitate them in this, Industree has partnered with leading Indian NGOs and fair trade partners like SEWA, SASHA, CFM, ANT, SADHANA, SAHAJ, DARAM, that work across states in India.

Negating the perception that eco-friendly/organic products are priced higher than usual, Chhiber says, “The products have been priced very competitively and can be benchmarked against any mainstream retailer.”

Looking forward
“The customer response has been great. We have realised that the customer is looking for products that are well priced, stylish and guilt-free. We have focused on bringing value to the customer who is very aware of issues relating to the environment, social and economic sustainability,” Chhiber says.

“Currently, Bangalore is the first such store in the country. Our current stores in Kolkata and Delhi are also changing to Mother Earth. Further, we plan to launch 12 large format stores and another 24 small format stores in the next five years” he informs.