By Elisa Serangeli | Managing Director
We closed our operations on March 18th before the Indian lockdown started. All our team, including 170 female artisans, were on paid leave for the duration of the lockdown. We resumed operations in beginning of June, but with many artisans returning back to their villages, and with the deteriorating situation of the pandemic in Mumbai, the situation is difficult.
The importance to keep the project alive, and support the artisans in this time, when opportunities and sustaining livelihoods is even more difficult, is extremely crucial for us.
"Experimenting with my sewing machine is keeping me going" says Veena, an artisan in embroidery from the Animedh Charitable Trust, a partner NGO to I was a Sari. Veena's very enterprising and hardworking and has been associated with I was a Sari since April 2017. "These days I miss going to our production centre and working. Most of my days are spent on housework, but when my daughter and I get a chance, we look up new blouse and dress designs. I have a sewing machine at home which I'm experimenting with, so that once this is finished I can take up more work sew new styles!" says Veena, when we asked her what she did during the lockdown.
While our artisans were honing their skills at home, we utilized the time, working from home to work on a revised I was a Sari brand identity, to revamp the communication and visual strategy of the brand.
We have finalized the new contents for website/catalogue/brand presentation and rewritten the entire text that goes on the website, catalogue, presentations in the new voice guidelines.
We have also finalized the social media strategy with content buckets, understanding how we communicate on different channels, setting up processes, analytics, tools to plan and execute the social media strategy. We have spent a lot of time understanding the DNA of the brand, and how this can be communicated in an honest way.
Concerning the visual identity, we are working on a brand book and the execution of a defined visual strategy in various contents used on all digital properties.
The lifestyle photoshoot got delayed due to the COVID situation, and is now being executed in July last week.
The work done so far will help create a young and vibrant communication across all digital platforms thereby helping in sales and supporting more artisans.
For the next 2 months, the goal of the project is to create all new contents – full set of images for the website, catalogue, presentation, social media, along with the texts.
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