Discussing Packing, Sustainability, and Community Building with Samriddh Burman

Have you wondered about the types of bags you need to carry for a vacation trip? Well, this post will introduce you to the Burlap People. So if you’re planning to follow sustainability while packing for trips, this is for you.

Even if you aspire to start a small business, there’s something for you. Yuktie Jhangiani, Kosha’s founder, recently chatted with Samriddh Burman. The chat was all about packing, sustainability, and community building.

He’s the founder of The Burlap People. They manufacture some fantastic handcrafted bags. But what’s interesting is that they use one material across all the bags they manufacture i.e., Burlap.

As you read about this fabric in the following segment, you’ll understand how useful it is in promoting environmental sustainability.

These bags are entirely made in India. The name, as well as the product’s packaging, is very admirable. Samriddh is also an avid traveller and has a passion for the mountains. Yuktie also describes him as a constant living enthusiast.

About the Burlap Fabric

Before we get into the topics discussed in the interview, let’s learn a little about the burlap fabric. Burlap is a rustic, durable, and versatile fabric that isn’t only meant for potato storage.

From shopping bags and gift bags to party favors and decorative accents, burlap sacks have various uses.

Adding to this is the environmentally friendly nature of these bags. They’re often reusable for many purposes beyond the one for which you buy them. Hence it’s also easily recyclable.

Plus, it’s biodegradable. This ensures that it disintegrates without any damage to the environment. So it also takes care of environmental sustainability.

Samriddh’s Travel Experiences

To start off, Yuktie asks Samriddh to share one of the most memorable moments from his recent travels.

Samriddh: “This entire year has involved travelling, both domestically and internationally.”

Samriddh shares his experience of travelling to Coonoor for a friend’s wedding. It’s located in the Nilgiris; a few hours drive from Coimbatore.

Samriddh: “It’s a beautiful place for whoever hasn’t been there. It’s located very close to the jungle. It was fantastic.”

He also talks about the beautiful weather that he got to experience as a result. Here’s how he describes the weather:

• Warm and pleasant during the day.
• Nice and chilly during the evenings.
• Mist covered with a little bit of sunshine

Samriddh: “It was just lovely being so close to nature.”

They also came across wildlife along this trip. One of the animals they saw was the Gaur. It’s also known as the Indian Bison.

Being close to nature is a massive highlight of any trip the Burlap People undertake.

Yuktie also talks about the ability of nature to charm you as you travel. She gives two examples as well:

• The intrinsic smell of eucalyptus as you drive up towards the Nilgiris.
• The smell of pine as you drive up towards Himachal.

Yuktie: “Savoiuring these small moments is what makes travel that much more intriguing.”

Samriddh: “It’s so interesting how smells get attached to your memory apart from the visuals. I think that’s always amazing. As soon as you smell something familiar, it takes you back to moments or times when you had smelt it before.”

Eco-Conscious Decision-Making That Promotes Sustainability

Many entrepreneurs come up with business ideas that suit the environment and promote sustainability. It’s the case with Yuktie and Samriddh too. Here’s what they have to say:

Yuktie: “We’re both building brands. We often make decisions that are not always influenced by business. We make it a point to think of the environment and the long-term impact of our decisions.”

Samriddh: “Well, for us, that’s always been the driving force from the beginning. For me personally, this started off as more of a passion project to fulfill this need to create a more positive impact around me toward my community. And that slowly grew into a business.

The fact that we work with Burlap or make bags happened by fate. The driving force was to create something of impact. Even till today, we try to maintain that although our company has grown and become a full-fledged business.”

Samriddh also shares how the production process at The Burlap People doesn’t follow the traditional routine.

All the bags they manufacture are done individually as the orders come in. They’re also very individualistic in packaging, materials used, and customer interactions.

They don’t keep any inventory and try to reduce as much waste as possible. So these are the values that lie at the core of their business.

The Value of Customer Interactions

Samriddh: “We spend a lot of time trying to get to know each and every customer. For the longest time, me and my co-founders did it ourselves, and we spoke to every single customer.”

• The goal behind this individualistic customer interaction was:
• Trying to Understand why they approached the brand
• What were their requirements
• A boost in the community-building process around the brand and its products.

Yuktie seconds his views on customer interaction. She also has similar things to share.

Yuktie: “The insights we get when we talk to clients, the stories they share with us, helps us come up with the products that they actually want. So nothing like customer interaction for sure!”

Samriddh also mentions how customer interaction can be gratifying. The simple reason is that their work isn’t always financially rewarding. But building relations with people and customers can take their brand a long way.

It helps in dealing with the rough times a business may go through. He shares the example of the COVID-19 pandemic as one such tough time for all businesses.

In times when people weren’t making many purchases, they still had many interactions and felt a sense of community. It helped them get through and survive the tough times.

Yuktie: “Yeah, you’ve said that so well. It could be a really hard day, and then one customer review will literally change the day. So yes, it’s a lot of gratification indeed.”

The Origin Story of the Custom Trooper

You’ll get a wide variety of bags at The Burlap People. And one of them is the Custom Trooper. Yukie asks Samriddhh to share the origin story of the Custom Trooper.

In reply, Samriddh mentions how most of their bag designs have evolved over time. They’ve never really employed a design department as such.

Most of the bags have come out of a need or some specification. It could be either because of one of the team members travelling or to fullfill a customer’s needs.

As for the Custom Trooper, its base model was made for Ronit Sarkar. He’s a musician, photographer, and videographer. He needed something for his daily use to keep his clothes, camera, and tripod. After all, he also travels often.

Samriddh: “It’s so great to personalize something because then it’s no longer an object. It becomes a part of you, and you give it a soul. It’s an extension of yourself, and you tend to look after it more.”

Over the years, many people added to this design. But most recently, Samriddh himself got a chance to customize this bag for his needs. He needed a bag for one of his trips to Sandakpu.

Here are the customized features for Samriddh’s customized model:

• Convertible Bottle holder. It can convert into a yoga mat holder or tripod holder
• It has the Parvati Valley strap. It’s a woven tradition Himachal designed-strap.
• It’s water repellent on the inside and has an inbuilt rain cover.
• It has a bunch of different pockets
• An upcycled leather pocket on the inside
• Custom embossings

Apart from this, you can customize the bag to whatever needs you as a customer come up with.

Samriddh: “Let your imagination run wild. If you can dream of it, we’ll try to make it real.

Yuktie commends the ability and extent to which the bag can be customized. Kosha has its fair share of customizations for products too. One such example is Kosha’s base layers.

Yuktie: “We had a client come in and say that he’s going to New York to run the half marathon. He needed a base layer for that. And that’s how we started working on creating the base layer that we have today.”

Give Back Burlap Initiative

The Burlap People also follow a nice initiative to do their bit towards helping protect the environment. It’s called the “Give Back Burlap” initiative. Here’s what Samriddh has to say about it:

Samriddh: So it’s always been there unofficially from the beginning. We’ve always offered people to send their bags back whether it’s for repair or they want to upcycle it. A few years back we made it official.”

It’s part of a circular economy model where you don’t have to dispose off things. You can send it back to the people who made it.”

Here again, it all depends on you as the customer. Once you return the bags, are they for repair? Or do you want to see some new additions to it?

Based on the purpose, The Burlap People take the whole bag back for starters. They see whatever they can use from it in it its current state. They then look to incorporate these elements into the new bag.

If that isn’t possible, they provide you with a discount on the new bag and keep the old one with them. But that bag does go to waste. It still has a lot of value. They use it either for personal or professional reasons.

Yuktie resonates with this initiative through Kosha’s “Repair Shop Initiative”. The idea behind this is to bring your garments back into the right shape.

Outdoor clothing is generally durable. But even if there’s a small tear, a misplaced hood, or a non-functioning zipper, Kosha is here to help.

And here’s an interesting part about this initiative. Even if you bring a product that isn’t Kosha’s, you can still get it fixed.

Well, if you keep the environment’s interests and sustainability in mind, there’s a lot you can do around it.

The Importance of Community Building for Brands

Yuktie: “Community building has been at the core of building our brands. Off late, there have been challenges. How has it changed over the years, and how are you dealing with it in the current time.”

Samriddh: “That’s been one of our biggest challenges. When we started off, we were one of the first people to use Instagram as a platform to showcase our products, tell our stories and build a community.”

He also shares how engaging with people was much easier around six years ago. He feels so because there wasn’t much noise on social media back then.

In today’s times, there are new entrants in the form of small businesses and individuals. But along with that, there are also large corporates who look to up their game on social media.

That being said, he still believes that they’ve successfully built a community over time. But their greatest challenge over time has been reaching out to more people.

Instagram has helped them in their pursuit, but they’ve also understood the need to branch out into more platforms for engagement.

Here are some of the strategies they’ve tried to practice and execute:

• Offline events to meet clients
• Small Intimate Gigs with Upcoming Artists

Samriddh: “It’s challenging, but I guess everybody needs to adapt, grow, and figure out to navigate these things.”

Yuktie: “I strongly believe that we can do much more together than we can try solving by ourselves.”

She also shares how Kosha tries to build a community by:

• Doing Collaborations like this chat
• Offer personalized customer experience in offline stores as much as possible.
• Simulate the Offline store environment through video calls for online clients.

Yuktie: “But like you say, it’s a work in progress, and we keep figuring along the way.”

She also talks about how there’s been a recent change in dynamics in the post-pandemic world.

More people are gravitating towards online shopping rather than offline.

She emphasizes the importance of striking the right balance between online and offline product distribution. It’s also something Kosha is working towards.

Conclusion

So if you’ll are planning any trips in the near future, look out for bags from The Burlap People. As I mentioned earlier, you might find attractive options that suit your preferences. Also, the idea of customization will allow you to add that personal touch.

I hope you learnt a few things that you could put to use in your life. Whether packing for a trip or building a brand, you should know the best ways to go about these things. If you want to watch the entire interview, here’s where you can do that:

 

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This post was written by Kosha team member – Shawn Mathias