Selling lingerie? The lads get their knickers in a twist

When she was interviewing a senior male executive keen to join her startup, Neha Kant, founder of the online lingerie retailer Clovia, discovered that he didn’t know what lingerie actually meant. When he realized that his job involved selling bras and panties, he politely backed out.

Kant has also come across instances of employees camouflaging their professional identity. “Many tell their parents that they work for an apparel rather than a lingerie firm,” she says. Interesting, 25% of buyers on Clovia are men, a fact highlighted by TOI in a recent report.

Once when Kant and her co-founder and husband Pankaj Vermani were visiting a colleague’s home, they were strictly told not to describe their company as a lingerie firm. “A large part of this has to do with socio-cultural issues,” says Kant.

Arpita Ganesh, founder of Bengaluru-based online lingerie boutique Buttercups, even had problems with a potential investor. “He said, `I would have loved to invest in your business, but I cannot tell my wife that I invested in a bra-chaddi business’,” recalled Ganesh.

And it isn’t only men who have a problem. Women who sell men’s undergarments are often equally squeamish about the details. Pallavi Khandelwal, founder of men’s online boxer brand, The Boxer Store, had no qualms telling her family what she did. But when it came to hiring women for the firm, she ran into a problem — women were coy and uncomfortable about even using the words ‘boxers’ or ‘underwear’.

“I even had a content writer who used words like pants and shorts. I had to ask her point blank if she was too shy to use the word underwear,” says Khandelwal.

Not everybody feels the same way. Richa Kar, founder of online lingerie startup Zivame, says she had no trouble hiring senior male talent. “You see many men working for women’s fashion brands, why make a distinction when it comes to lingerie?” asks Kar, whose company sells two bras a minute. Zivame recently appointed Shaleen Sinha as COO, a man who previously held leadership roles at Aditya Birla Group and Boston Consulting Group.

Some men, despite initial inhibitions, quickly learn the nuances of the trade. Arun Srinivasan, a former senior marketing manager at Zivame, says he had thought twice before joining the company two years ago and was initially embarrassed about the job. At that time his parents were also looking for a bride for him.

“To my surprise, I found that people were cool about it and the product category made for interesting conversations. I had to read a lot to get myself acquainted with the products and eventually figured that it is actually simple for a man to handle it,” says Srinivasan, who has since founded another startup.

Clovia’s Kant has designed an interesting induction process for new recruits. “We do Wikipedia sessions to bring them up to speed. Most of our new hires have to learn the distinction between, say, a G-string and a thong,” she says.

Christopher Pilny, who worked as a cashier at Victoria’s Secret, and is now the editor-in-chief of online science chronicler RedOrbit, has written a blog that lists things that, as a man, you should never say while working at Victoria’s Secret. He told TOI that when a man looks desperately for ways to make conversation with a customer, he could end up making embarrassing remarks. “I thankfully made it out of there without it ever happening, but I did utter this doozy at one point: `Welcome to Victoria’s Secret: We don’t have a nursing line, but our stuff will get you pregnant.’ This line actually came to me when a customer made it known she was pregnant, and asked why we didn’t have a nursing line,” he said. Later, when he repeated the line to another pregnant woman who made the same enquiry, his manager pulled him aside and asked him never to say it again.

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