When filmy merchandising is a ‘macha’ business

Chennai

Anand Srinivasan and Raunaq Mangottil, co-founders of Fully Filmy, were schoolmates when they shared their Tinsel Town dreams, which found fruition in their engineering college years as the seed of a filmy merchandise company was born. Having graduated from SRM in 2012, the duo had stints with and IT firm and ad agency before the entrepreneurial bug ensured they kickstarted their venture in three years. Today, the company sells everything from cinema inspired apparel to phone cases to posters, coffee mugs and everything in between.

Srinivasan, who is the CEO, tells us, “In the beginning, we were fixated with labels like Tantra which made brilliant graphic tees and we wanted to garner a substantial understanding of the market before stepping in. We started off as a Facebook page, making minimalistic Bollywood and Kollywood posters which gave us great publicity. Our big break came courtesy of director Mani Ratnam’s OK Kanmani team which wanted us to work on their social media campaign, which we did in a record time. By 2015 June, we had printed filmy tees selling on e-tailer sites and by 2016, we were retailing in MBOs across Chennai.” The company recently tied up with the film crew of Vada Chennai and 96 to come up with marketing drives for promoting the same.

In August 2016, the company set up its own outlet in a popular mall in Velachery, followed by four more outlets across the city. Srinivasan says, “As of now, an investment of about Rs 2.5 cr has gone into the enterprise. We are keen on tapping Tier 2 and Tier 3 towns in TN, because the youngsters there have a culture of inventing trends, through t-shirts and other accessories. After this, our plans are to expand into the Southern states. We need to take merchandising to the next level and make it an integral part of the retail ecosystem just like how the Americans have done it with superheroes and comic books.”