1. Make way for MR BUTTON. He is a modern dandy with a sublime taste for
the best of everything stylish. Always on the move, he has been
phenomena which personify high style, charm, character and a swagger of
the modern dandy. Started back in 2011, by Khetan brothers, Mr Button, a
menswear brand has now become the fastest growing private label online
brand in India. EDC IITR in interaction with the duo founders:
The Beginning:
The very thought of not able to find any sharp and structured clothing from all the trends
around the globe at affordable prices that a college going student could afford bugged the
Khetan brothers, Gourav and Deepak. To solve this problem the duo then got their own clothing,
T-shirts etc. and started making it a brand. Thus, out of this, Mr Button was born.
The Team:
Mr Button comprises a team of people who all are from different backgrounds. Gourav is from
IITR, Deepak, CEO of the venture, has done Design Management, Akshat has done his MBA from
University of Birmingham. All that they have in common is 10% design and the rest is a passion
for making Indian Men look sharp. “That’s what unite us!”, Gourav says, “To make anyone a part
of our team all we see is whether the person shares the same vision or not. Moreover, it's not
about a team having a design background but a team which is motivated and shares the same
vision.”
What has been the involvement of other Students from IITR?
“IITR has a very deep connection to this venture when we all started.” Deepak says, “ I used to
travel back to IITR, stay there, meet with Gourav and his batch mates and discuss with everyone
about how we can share this brand and transform the men's clothing industry. Now, Gourav,
who is a pass out from IITR, takes care of the E-commerce management. We are also planning
to go for recruitments from IIT and mainly we`ll be recruiting from IIT Roorkee.”
Future plans:
Menswear has never been more interesting than it is right now. The founders say they want to
make Mr Button the no. 1 menswear brand of India. Mr Button is already topping the charts
when it comes to online private label. Deepak says, “Also, we want to expand internationally
because we have got really global aesthetics to our brand. It’s not limited to Indian men as
such. If you follow the trends closely you’ll notice that we are expired from the trends all around
the globe. We feel that we can give it back to the world and not just to the Indian nation. We’ll
be more focused on online as of now. We do have a lot of different strategies for the offline but
that would be something which would be done after we have given our everything to the online
market.”

2. How do you Market/Advertise your Business?
Lot of ways. Firstly, the kind of content that we generate represents the kind of brand that we
aspire to create. Then, Social Media has been a great channel for us. Facebook, Google, in fact
the entire Digital Marketing has been the key to any online brand, but what differentiates us
from any other company is the different, unique kind of digital marketing that we do. So how do
you do different from the herd is the key and I think that we have been able to create that
unique positioning.
Why Mr Button is on the expensive side compared to other similar eCommerce
companies?
The question has all the types of answers to it. But the main thing is both good design and good
quality comes at a cost. A lot of hard work and diligence has been there behind each and every
Mr Button’s product. We have not copied anything from the other brands and used it. Basically,
we’ve researched a lot into the kind of fit that we wanted to create. We have called it structured
fit, which no one has ever called before. And that's just for the fit. Then it comes to construction,
styling etc. So if you want to innovate, create something new, it always comes with a cost. Also,
its not much expensive for the kind of audience that we are targeting, quite in the range of
Zara’s and all the other companies.
What do you consider as your biggest achievement till date?
We would say that our customers are our biggest achievements, the way they love Mr Button.
We have been able to create something which they are inspired to wear. There are a lot of
international brands present at the moment and people still prefer Mr Button over and above
those brands. Moreover, we were able to do it with minimal resources and our own capital with
no major funding, no major recruitment of talent from around the world as such. We have been
able to do it within our own capacity and that I think is our biggest achievement. There are a lot
of similar brands and they would’ve required a billion dollars to do what we have done.
A piece of advice you'd like to give to someone just starting out:
I think to make a startup successful is not an overnight thing. You have to work constantly day
and night to create it, to sustain it, to grow it. You’ll fail a lot of times, every single day. But don’t
quit, keep going, keep learning and keep adapting fast and it will help you reach where you want
to reach. Adapting yourself is the biggest key because you’ll learn a lot, you’ll gain a lot, but
learning and adapting to what’s there and what’s coming is going to make the success happen.