SAN International was incorporated by brothers Anupam and Abhinav Khandelwal in a 500 sqm unit with 40 sewing machines and a small team. Using their expertise in the European market, SAN primarily supplied womenswear blouses and shirts to Germany.
To cope with growing demand from the customer base, a second factory was opened in Okhla with 100 additional machines.
The business continued to expand with an additional 100 machines and a new headquarters in Gurgaon.
Having been established for 7 years, the product offering was diversified to expand the market area, with new customers in womenswear and childrenswear in France and the USA as well as a continued growth in the existing German market.
By the end of 2008, SAN owned 600 machines in 3 manufacturing units.
With an ever-evolving business, SAN Studio was created; an in house design studio of 6 designers focusing on showcasing the capabilities of SAN through trend led collections. By the end of 2009, SAN had expanded into the UK market and added an additional 400 machines bringing the total to 1000 to cope with the demand for beautiful Indian product.
Following a successful collaboration with the UK, the first international office was opened in Milton Keynes to service the rapidly growing UK customer base.
With continued growth in the UK market, the UK operation expanded with new offices in London, the fashion capital of the world, and Leicester, a renowned fashion hub in the UK and with this brought a whole new UK team! UK based product development was introduced, and sales and account management were incorporated to increase efficiency for the UK clients.
Following the continued success of the UK offices and growth in sales and clients, SAN ventured to Spain! SAN opened the third international office in a fabulous location in Barcelona, with a Spanish based design and sales team servicing the Spanish clients and adding a new dimension to SAN’s design handwriting.
With a global push on sustainability and the impact of the fashion industry on the planet, SAN formed a Sustainability team to focus on incorporating sustainable practises throughout the supply chain, earning accreditations from worldwide bodies to support our efforts. New technologies were introduced to factories to improve sustainable production, including installing an ETP plant for water recycling. With continued demand for India product, additional machines brought the total to 2000 by the end of 2018!
We launched partnerships with Miami Barn in Sri Lanka and Signet in India to diversify our product offering further and expand into jersey and licensed clothing.
With well-established offices in India, UK and Spain, SAN began 2020 well positioned to offer clients fabulous product collections, with factories involved in various improvements to make the production and supply chain as sustainable as possible.
Unfortunately, in March, the Covid-19 pandemic struck affecting the fashion industry like nothing that has ever been seen before and, like all businesses, we made company-wide adjustments to minimise losses and survive.
We consolidated both offices and factories, and utilised technology to showcase products to clients with Covid restrictions in place.
2021 started in lockdown in the UK and parts of the world. We adapted and kept capacity low, and the design teams continued to develop new collections and in difficult circumstances gathered information and fabric bases. We also continued to develop collections for our collaboration partners, Signet in Delhi and Miami Bam in Sri Lanka.
Quite a few SS21 orders were dropped, and AW21 development was taken with a lukewarm reception, mainly due to the vast amounts of carry-over stock from 2020.
All shops re-opened in July and sales were strong in all sectors.
The teams created SS22 collections, and we set up showrooms in London, Barcelona, Dublin and Leicester. The reaction was amazing, and we had the busiest start to a Spring Summer season in 21 years of SAN trading. Orders from all clients including fabric and capacity bookings were brisk.
With a 'business as usual' attitude and teams back in the office, demand grew and we moved into bigger premises in Leicester, with a brand new showroom, tech room and more office space for our growing team of Technical Managers, Account Managers and Product Developers.
A demand for India product presented a brilliant opportunity in the USA so with a small team in place, we opened our New York office in the heart of the fashion district in September. With collections designed for the US market, the office acts as a base for nationwide customers. With continued growth in Spain, the team relocated to a new office providing room for a design hub and showroom.
