Bare mention of world ‘royalty’ takes one to the land of opulence and riches beyond imagination. A grandeur of Victorian villas, old palaces, colonial abodes, and old Italian churches, all leave one with a mesmerizing and ‘wow’ effect, and kind of leave you secretly longing for bit of lavish lifestyle what they used to have. There are huge mansions with manicured lawns, pricey cars, designer clothing, extravagant parties & ornate furniture. To talk of furniture, no royalty is complete without ornate furniture.

There is an obscure factor that makes a furniture at our home representation of our status and pride, which is tough to measure, sometimes hard to find, and often difficult to define. Precisely, this encapsulates the story of Curves & Carvings(C&C)– the only online portal in India that offers custom-made teak wood designer lifestyle furniture. Bootstrapped & marshaled by Vikas Maini; a young passionate professional who strives to bring in world-class standards to hitherto unorganized sector. C&C as a brand is trying to make a global impression in the designer furniture arena, predominantly with its vintage & antique custom made designs.

C&C offer products in all home furniture categories ranging from Bedroom sets, Dining, Living room sets, Storage, Tables and much more. “Indian retailers have a myopic view of customer needs, not to mention the local carpenters who are never in sync with customer expectation in terms of quality & finishing. Bringing excellence into each & every step of furniture making, we aim to transform this highly opaque, unorganized and fragmented market into a transparent, customer-centric market driven by quality benchmark, at a reasonable, affordable pricing. Affordable luxury is what we offer,” asserts Vikas. For instance, most of retailers in metro cities sell beds made out of MDF (medium-density fiberboard), for average of Rs.50000 – Rs.60000 for a decent bed, while

at C&C you can have a bed carved out of teakwood and customized as per the customer’s aspirations by paying 30-35 percent extra, giving your home a royal look and feel.

C&C is best known for its quality, designs and capabilities to innovate according to customers’ discrete demands

Setting Benchmarks for Customer-Engagement
Based at Pune, C&C is best known for its quality, designs and capabilities to innovate according to customers’ discrete demands. C&C also use world-class standards in packaging (five layer packaging, with final layer being a hard box), product delivery (using best logistic providers) and customer services. “Customer is always the king and we ensure their satisfaction. We go all the way no matter what it cost” adjoins Vikas. Indeed, one of its Dubai based customer avers by fantastic experience, when C&C sent its craftsman to fix a negligible damage caused during the transit, all the way to Dubai, costing Rs.20000 to the company, while a local craftsman job would have done the same for 10 percent of that cost.

Unlike other CEOs who create a host of hierarchy before anyone could reach them, Vikas walks his talk of being customer centric. One could easily find him attending client’s call to discuss their need or concern, supervise furniture installation at customers’ house, and take their feedback for every process involved. “We are highly focused on retail customer house hold market and everything we know about running this venture is taught by them. Being in conversation with client to understand their need has given us a hands-on experience and taught us ways to improvise to become world class. I must have personally spoken to 3000+ prospective customers myself in 30 months of our journey till date,” adds Vikas. With this personal attention to customer satisfaction, keeping touch with them via sending regular product updates, and taking feedback from them, have resulted in positive word-of-mouth for the company

A Brief, but Effective Marketing Strategy
Having a niche customer-base,

the company's ticket size per item is Rs. 40000/- with average customer per order is Rs.3 lakh worth. C&C intends to reduce this ticket size going forward, and multiply its customer base. With an aim to take the brand name further forward, C&C indulges in brief, but multi-pronged social marketing strategies including Facebook campaigns and Google organic search (being the number one listed brand on Google organic search). “We have been lucky to acquire customers with any considerable market spend. Having said that, we are not discounting power of traditional marketing means. We aim to grow organically and gradually, building a robust supply chain on the way there,” says Vikas.

C&C is looking forward to establish a franchise model in select cities like Hyderabad, Mumbai & Bangalore to further enhance the brand visibility. Going forward, the company also plans to augment its customer engagement model with several additional features like giving customers direct access to its facilities through webcam and launching YouTube series to acquaint customers with comprehensive information about the furniture industry, products and prices. C&C also happens to be Indian online partner with luxury furniture and lighting brand Mariner (127 years old furniture brand in Spain).

“We also have futuristic plans about launching studio-like showrooms across the cities, where people can directly experience the quality and designs, and then place an order in the website. En route to the future, our mantra is 'affordable luxury', and we are ready to offer whatever effort it takes. We are just getting started” concludes Vikas. Having had a steady growth in the past two years in terms of revenue (Rs.60 lakh & Rs.1 crore respectively), C&C has already proven its mettle to take on the Indian furniture market, which is anticipated to hit $32 billion by 2019.

Key Management:
Vikas Maini Founder & CEO
A young professional who always travels in pursuit of his passion, Vikas had worked in automotive industry for 13+ years. He is an engineer from PTU, Jalandar & holds an MBA from Symbiosis Center of Management & HRD (SCMHRD), Pune.

Office: Pune