In August 2026, couture designer Samant Chauhan and fine jewelry brand Symetree opened a joint retail space at Khan Market in New Delhi. It is a store where two different brands — apparel and jewelry — coexist in one space, united by the common thread of Indian craftsmanship and heritage-rooted design. This model of brands from different industries teaming up to build a single luxury store is a template Japanese companies can draw on when thinking about who to partner with in India.
Samant Chauhan is a designer brand working with handwoven Bhagalpuri silk and contemporary prêt-à-porter, while Symetree is a fine jewelry brand handling rare gemstones, bespoke high jewelry, and Jadau and Navratna collections. The two have opened a joint retail space at New Delhi's Khan Market, a gallery-like space where the two brands coexist. It brings apparel and jewelry together in a single store, bound by a shared axis of Indian craftsmanship and heritage-rooted design.
For wedding and festival occasions, apparel and jewelry tend to be chosen as a set. Rather than visiting separate stores, being able to choose jewelry to match an outfit in a single space reduces customer effort and tends to raise average spend. Samant Chauhan and Symetree chose a joint retail space to create, by pooling what each brand does best, "a place that proposes a complete look" that would be hard to build alone. Choosing Khan Market, a commercial district frequented by the wealthy, also fits this aim.
When different brands coexist in one store, if the worldviews clash, customers get confused. In the case of Samant Chauhan and Symetree, there is a shared axis of Indian craft and handwork, and apparel and jewelry are in a relationship where each brings out the other. In wedding preparation, brides often choose the outfit first and then look for matching jewelry, and being able to consult at the same store lets the decision happen in one visit. For the sellers, there's an advantage in mutual referral — sending customers who came for apparel toward jewelry, and vice versa. Presenting both brands as a continuous whole through gallery-like interiors lets customers receive the entire look as a single story. A joint store also has the benefit of splitting rent and operations, making it a foothold into prime locations that would be hard to reach alone.
Both brands describe this collaboration as bound by a shared interest in Indian craftsmanship, heritage-rooted design, and contemporary design. This type of cross-industry brand tie-up to build a luxury retail space has become one form for capturing India's festival and wedding consumption.
For a Japanese brand entering India, it's a heavy burden to build a standalone prime-location store alone. The idea of partnering with a brand built around Indian craft can be considered alongside the case of House of Chikankari from Lucknow which has a network of women artisans, and Koskii's reverse omnichannel which expands its store network with ethnic wear. On the jewelry side, the move can be lined up against the jewelry brand Palmonas co-founded by celebrities, giving a sense of the range of ways to sell apparel in India.
Consumption of wedding-centered apparel is a large flow that links clothing, jewelry, and beauty. As with the moves by Libas, an ethnic-wear D2C incorporating fast fashion and instant delivery, apparel categories are starting to connect across boundaries.
The joint store from Samant Chauhan and Symetree was a move by two brands with overlapping customer bases, pooling what each does best to create "a place for the complete look" in a prime location. The next action available to Japanese companies selling apparel or luxury goods in India is, before going solo, to find a local brand whose customer base overlaps around craftsmanship or wedding demand, and try a joint store in one section of a prime location like Khan Market. Splitting operations and rent can also keep the initial investment down.
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