“Innerwear is the first garment a person wears everyday and there weren’t enough choices in the market. If my outfits are designed to reflect my mood for the day, why can’t my innerwear do the same - they don’t have to be black or white?” – that was the question that led Yogesh Kabra to establish XYXX.
XYXX is a premium category of comfortable innerwear at unbelievably accessible price points. Aimed at an 18-40 year old male audience, the brand places the cool, comfortable, and energetic youth of today at the center of their product development. The brand combines comfort and sexiness, luxury and value, and elegance and fun.
The inspiration
The idea was to make the first garment choice of the day, a more exciting and fulfilling affair for everyone. “I wanted the choice to be a happy choice, which reflected self-expression to some extent just like a t-shirt does but, for our own self without having to make it a trade-off between quality and cost.”
What is unique about XYXX?
Coming from a textile background, quality is at the heart of everything that Yogesh undertakes at XYXX.
The fabric used for the innerwear is LenzingMicroModal® which is the most premium underwear fabric across the world. It is extracted out of the pulp of beech wood tree in Austria. MicroModal® is 3 times softer than cotton, is feather light, cooler to touch, and upto 50% more moisture absorbent than cotton making it the perfect fabric for India’s weather. MicroModal® is also biodegradable and natural. This means, any clothing made with MicroModal® will return to the earth in one’s lifetime. The waistbands in XYXX innerwear are made using Microfiber yarns, which is very gentle on the skin and leaves no rashes.
Collections
Currently selling from their website www.xyxxcrew.com, it is also available on major marketplaces such as Myntra and Amazon. XYXX recently launched its latest collection BEND(IN), which is inspired from the motion of bending and focuses on the bands of the innerwear, which is a refreshing change in the innerwear category.
Profile
Yogesh Kabra, Founder – XYXX
Yogesh completed his MBA from Hult International Business School, Boston, where he was recognised on the dean’s list for academic excellence. He specialises in supply chain management and Design Thinking.
Before pursuing an MBA, Yogesh has spent 3 years in learning manufacturing process of woven fabric at factories across India (Bhiwandi, Surat, Delhi, and Tirupur). The learnings from working on the factory floor at an early age: starting from how the threads are spun to processing and printing of fabric gave him a unique exposure to the entire supply chain of the manufacturing process. In US, Yogesh worked at the Verizon Innovation Centre on a project to develop solution to integrate customer experience across all mobile and digital channels. After completing his post graduation he retuned to India to resume his role in the business.
As per the “plan,” Yogesh joined the family business and during the initial days after he returned he went out shopping and could not find innerwear that were tasteful and did not dig a hole in the pocket. This was genesis of XYXX.
“In America for every $ you are willing to pay more, there is a different culture of underwear you could buy. When I say different culture I do not just refer to the brand but the styling, the fabric, the waistband, the entire purpose and the experience. There is a plethora of options for every kind of consumer taste and requirement. I was just not able to accept that in India where we only made underwear for the masses (Black/White/Blue) or one particular taste and literally ZERO fabric choice. The only options were bigger fashion brands which also sell innerwear but a) they were too expensive: I didn’t want to pay 600 bucks for one brief or 800 bucks for boxer. I knew I could do a better job at a much lower price. and b) They didn’t pay attention to innerwear as a relevant product category : There collection do not change for the entire year and have extremely limited option of styles and fabric”
2015 was the boom of the E-commerce industry in India. Niche verticals such as women’s lingerie were booming in both funds and as a category but the bigger question to be addressed was why hasn’t anyone targeted the men’s market? “In my opinion the problem that men’s innerwear category faces in India is very unique from what we have seen in the women’s category. Men’s innerwear segment does not face the discovery or the “long tail” problem like the women’s segment does. I think the most important problem with men’s category is that it does not have enough choices at affordable prices. All the major players in the category are targeting the same customer and offering similar products making it a commodity oriented and mundane segment. We started XYXX to solve such problems and e-commerce is a good opportunity because we could target a larger audience and unlike other apparel you cannot try innerwear even in physical retail”.
Apart from spending most of his time at XYXX, Yogesh is also extremely passionate about teaching. While preparing for competitive exams to get into a business school, he taught Quantitative Aptitude and Verbal Reasoning at PT Education to student appearing for CAT/GMAT and other competitive exams as a full time faculty. He is in the youngest member in the working committee of the Maheshwari Education Trust run by the community to provide education to children with modest economic background. They currently serve more than 3000 students every year.