Nachimuthu Textiles Srirangam Mylapore Foray

P Nachimuthu was a quiet weaver in the Elavanur Village near Karur.  As a young man just out of his teens, he would make a trip in the 1930s to the larger towns in TN with his woven products especially Towels. Over the years, he found that the acceptance for his products to be the highest in the sacred temple town of Srirangam(https://prtraveller.blogspot.com/2007/09/108-divya-desams-srirangam-lord.html). 

And thus he moved in with his family to the North corner of West Adayavalanjan Street and began weaving towels and 9x5 veshti from his home in Srirangam. From here, he would make monthly trips to the Godown Street in North Madras to supply to the wholesale market in Parrys.

Just around 70years ago, Nachimuthu moved into retail setting up a textiles showroom in South Gate opposite the Ranga Ranga Gopuram in Srirangam. In the second half of the 1950s, Nachimuthu stood in the local election and was elected Unopposed as the Counsellor in 1959 and then the Vice Chairman of Srirangam Muncipality in 1962.     

His son Rangaswamy too joined him in the business that began selling veshtis, sarees and towels to the residents of Srirangam. Over the last seven decades, the showroom has been operating from the few hundreds square feet shop on South Gate (Therku Vaasal) Srirangam  next to another popular shop - Venkatesa Bhavan ( https://prtraveller.blogspot.com/2017/12/srirangam-venkatesa-bhavan.html) and built a strong and loyal customer base. In Srirangam, Nachimuthu and son created a niche brand that offered high quality handloom at competitive prices. Into the 1980s, Rangaswamy's son Dhanampal joined the business but they continue to operate out of the first and only showroom in Srirangam for several decades. Nachimuthu textiles also set up their own production plant in Salem. 

Rangaswamy's grandson Vikash accompanied Nachimuthu to the shop as a young Srirangam School boy. Even at that young age, he watched his great grandfather and his grandfather in action and learnt the nuances of the trade from them. In 2002, Nachimuthu passed away at the age of 94.

After completion of a Visual Communication course, Vikash in his early 20s, led the first big expansion of Nachimuthu Showroom in Srirangam by opening up a readymade garment store on  the same South Gate street in Srirangam in the middle of last decade and had been managing and running that for the last six years. Rangaswamy passed away five years ago.

Just ahead of the lockdown, this fourth generation entrepreneur took the call to make Nachimuthu Textiles' biggest foray "My great grandfather and grandfather always wanted to set up a showroom in Madras but they did not do that in their lifetime." 

In the last decade or two, the next gen of most of the original inhabitants of Srirangam have moved to Madras into the IT space and with them moved their parents as well to the metro. The push to open a showroom in Madras came from these long standing customers of Nachimuthu Textiles in Srirangam who had now settled now in Madras "I found that there was a good demand in Madras from the original  customers of Srirangam and hence we finally decided to set up a shop in Madras."

They explored opportunities between Nanganllur and Mylapore and freezed on South Mada Street a couple of hundred yards from the Kapaleeswarar temple.

Vikash says that the orders have been enouraging within the first fortnight of the launch in Mylapore. "Already during Aadi, we have had long standing customers who were originally from Srirangam placing large orders. We also catered this week to a couple of bulk orders."

Vikash is just 29 but he has taken this bold and enterprising step of making a foray into the city of a household brand in Srirangam. He remembers a piece of advise from his grandfather "Even if the margin is small never reduce the quality of the handloom. That is how this brand was created and that I see as my greatest blessing - to take forward and protect a brand that has stood the test of time over seven decades."

While there is stiff competition with several textile showrooms around the Mada Streets in Mylapore, Vikash is confident that the quality of his products and the price competitiveness will hand the customers in Madras in the long run. They continue to produce products from their production base in Salem. Nachimuthu Textiles sells all types of Veshtis and Sarees including cotton and silk and especially those relating to Weddings and auspicious occasions. 

For several decades, they have been regular suppliers of Vastrams to the Ranganathaswamy Temple as well as to many other Divya Desams in Tamil Nadu.  And now they hope that the vastrams from this showroom on South Mada Street will find its way into the Kapaleeswarar temple to be draped on the Swamy and Ambal.

This section will check the progress made by Srirangam's Nachimuthu Showroom in Mylapore.