YELO

YELO - the crazy brand born out of college

Guess what happens when 3 crazy friends studying design at NIFT decide to go on a Goa trip? A venture is started & a super-cool brand is born..!! Today, we got a chance to speak to the founders of one such start-up : YELO! Neha, Angel & Kanika of YELO are sharing their start-up story with us.
YELO, as a brand, reflects the team which is working on it - fun, off-beat, wacky, unique. They make funky laptop bags & other works of art. The venture started in 2009 and has since then gain a lot of traction & appreciation. So here goes the interview with them

Tell us something about the Team @ YELO. Some info about the ones who run the show.. who plays what role?

YELO (pronunciation- yey-lo) is as important to us as karan arjun were to rakhi (in the movie karan-arjun of course) ‘it’s’ our little baby. We are three of us,
Neha agarwal :: the illustrator heroine, allot of our music and bollywood graphics come out of her little pinky brain. Then there is Kanika Goyal :: the clueless mastermind (using a big-bad oxymoron here to sound intelligent), all our styling, designs, planning , money matters are taken care by her. and then there is Angel Bedi :: she does nothing and is useless! (ok no shes not..); shes responsible for adding the ullooos, quirk and kitsch to yelo! :D

How did Yelo begin? What prompted you? How was the first product born?

Once upon a time blablabla. Ok so we hibernating in an empty class, making plans for the to-be summer vacation and obviously cribbing about being broke all the time. Co-incidentally our leather class was on full swing that semester and everyone was making bags. Eureka moment! ”Oye lets make bags and sell them and make money to go to GOA” and we lived happily ever after :) Well, we did end up going to goa, but that was the summer after. Because, that very summer we got too involved with initiating and creating YELO and worked our asses off at it. Roaming around the chaotic and beautiful streets of old Delhi, buying fabric from ancient ‘karigars’ , borrowing inspiration, discovering new forms of kitsch and interpreting it our way!

The whole idea is to do ‘things’ differently. ‘cause at the end of the day, we wanted to tell everyone that a bag is not just a bag… we just wanted to make simple bags that everyone would want to own, you know.. the ‘it’ bag.. so we used pvc and bright fun colors of patent leather and came up with our signature yelo pvc bag.. can be used by a 4 year old baby girl and an 80 year old happening granny! Its all about having your own salman khan se lekar jim morrison with you, har din har waqt..!

About the bijness - How has the response been till now? How many stores you retail out to??

The response has been super nice, and thank god and kitsch for that : ) retailing at the moment is through the following 6 stores…Delhi - Rio Grande, Mumbai - Sobo, Chandigarh - Vanity Box, Goa - Orange Oregano, Bangalore - Orange Bicycle, Kolkata - Kaji.

How does the road ahead look like? What next?

The road looks pretty neat. We have some solid plans. But we can’t disclose them at the moment (yes yelo is wannabe-mysterious).. We just want to hold our ground and look ahead.. hint- we will be expanding soon , getting into more accessories and garments. (not so mysterious i say..!!)

What would you advice to emerging creative entrepreneurs who want to get started?

It would be completely wrong on our part to give advise (but it shall be given anyway).. JUST GO FOR IT.. beg borrow steal money and do your thing, cause you never know, you will learn from it if it works out and.. if it does not work out, you will probably learn more. adios!

PS: Thank you ZEPO :)
http://stories.zepo.in/post/10232132166/yelo-the-crazy-brand-born-out-of-college