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Business Profile
In their own words, 'for 25 years, Good Earth has been nurturing a homegrown design and lifestyle brand that celebrates style from an Indian perspective'. The company was set up in 1996 at a single location in south Mumbai by Anita Lal, a psychology graduate with an interest in formal learning in studio pottery. Her passion has always been to create a luxury brand that brings the talents of rural artists to the classy urban Indian market. This passion and vision form the core of the Good Earth success story.
From the get-go, building products around the stories of where they were born is an integral part of the Good Earth business strategy. Staying true to their core target market in cities, the idea behind every store location is to build a welcoming ambiance of luxuriousness around the entire shopping experience, urging people to stay and appreciate their product lines without the pressure to purchase.
Defining Traits
The company was started with a passion for serving a market need and with a win-win strategy of spotlighting a hidden gem - rural Indian artists with unexplored talent and no real avenues for expansion on their own. The idea was to make the art, products, and stories of rural India more accessible to the sophisticated tastes of urban clientele across the country, beginning with a store in cosmopolitan south Mumbai. This part of the Good Earth success story is pivotal in understanding their journey.
What truly helped pave the path forward for the founder Anita Lal, is an inherent lifestyle that is similar to the end user her products serve. As she often mentions, her instinct guides most of the creations of Good Earth. This kind of intimate understanding of your target audience gained only by being one of them, is important for a start-up and can take years for most big companies to achieve.
Family businesses tend to have another burden taken off their plate: the issue of finding a successor who understands the values that the company was built on. For Good Earth, the daughter of the founder and CEO, Simran Lal, was groomed and ready to take the business into its next phase. This strategic decision in the Good Earth business strategy led to the founding of Nicobar, a more trendy younger co-brand, and the recent addition of Paro, focusing on well-being and personal care products, both of which created new markets for their business, but avoided diluting the original vision of Good Earth.
With ten stores in India and Good Earth's global footprint in 235 countries, it has managed to retain its niche Indian luxury market while steadily growing it’s global footprint.
Key Takeaways
This is the Good Earth success story, one of a founder who started her small business with a gut instinct and a passion. Anita Lal knew her target market and her product line well from the start, and she sensibly used that knowledge to guide the direction of Good Earth as part of their unique Good Earth business strategy.
In today's India, there are many new players in the market offering Indian art and products to serve the international traveler and local city clientele, but in 1996, Good Earth was a trendsetter in this field. As a frontrunner in any area of low competition, they got to set the direction of growth and pace of development. This aspect of Good Earth's business strategy continues to this day, staying on point with the artists they serve and expanding to the voice of their savvy urban consumers.
Learn more about Good Earth here:
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