THIS MAN WANTS TO BUILD YOU A BEAR

Mike Murjani, Says that as a child he was very close to the underprivileged, when he was a little boy, living with his grandparents in what is now since one of his favourite aunts of the four he had, would take him shopping in the car once a week.
"My aunt would make me sing before she handed me the gifts to give to the individual inmates at the homes of the blind and lepers" recalls Mohan who now runs a multimillion dollar business spread over several continents. Murjani is the man behind Tommy Hilfiger in India and is also about to launch Calvin Klein and Jimmy Choo in India in the coming months.

Best know for having launched the first women's designer jeans in the world in the Seventies - Gloria Vanderbilt -  and for having propelled designer Tommy Hilfiger into worldwide fame, Murjani has been in the big league of the fashion business for the last 30 years. As a young man, the astute businessman convinced Vanderbilt -- an American icon of the Sixties and Seventies -- to endorse the world's first pair of designer jeans built for a woman. Sales took off, thanks to the fact that Vanderbilt appeared in an unusual TV campaign where she addressed her viewers directly. Thirty years on, Vanderbilt products are still a billion business worldwide, or so says Murjani, who was the first off the block to conceptualize a pair of woman's designer jeans "because till that point there were no jeans made specially for women". He recalls that till that point women would buy men's jeans and have them altered for fit "or gap the men's versions off with a tight belt that fit the contours of their womanly bodies". Murjani's double brainwave not only created a separate woman's market for jeans but also brought mid-priced 'designer' wear to the mass market. After him, followed the deluge, and there were hundreds of clones all over the place and today it might be said that the women's denim market rivals, if not overshadows the men's globally.

Murjani also mentored Tommy Hilfiger when the designer was a non-entity and came to him to have his unknown lines marketed. Murjani being the savvy marketer that he is, launched a tantalizing advertising campaign in New York that compared Hilfiger to the all time greats of American design, including Ralph Lauren and Calvin Klein and provoked so much curiosity(if not outrage) that Hilfiger went to overnight success (and notoriety!). The fact that Hilfiger had product lines waiting to be sold only served to enhance his overnight reputation as a talented, cheeky designer who cared not a whit for propriety. "The resultant exposure in the '80s' catapulted Hilfiger to success," opines Murjani, the man who crafted the campaign and was closely associated with Hilfiger during his early days. Today though Hilfiger has been sold to Apax for $1.6 billion, Murjani retains control over the Hilfiger territories in India and the Middle east and is responsible for the Hilfiger stores in this country.

Today after several decades Murjani is back in India because "this country has entered an upward growth cycle since the year 200 and is ready for international designer brands".

Which is why the Sindhi businessman is going to introduce, not just one or two, but more than half a dozen of the world's biggest brands into the major metropolis over the next 12 months.
But the project that has him most enthused is a charming little teddy bear project called Build-A-Bear, that owes its origins to New York and his grandson's birthday. Walking into a boutique in the Big Apple with his wife some years ago, looking for a gift for his grandson, Aditya, living in Singapore, Murjani watched his wife go through the process of 'building' her own teddy bear starting with furry clot and padding, on the young man's birthday. This is the Build-A-Bear concept that Murjani now wants to import to India. "I want to give young Indians as well their adult’s counterparts the opportunity to create a meaningful gift. The Build-A-Bear project involves an emotional experience that makes it so much more attractive and very different to simply buying a toy off the shelf. It also has a 'value' element that can be used to benefit underprivileged children by creating 'Bear Mobiles' to go and play with slum children and an educative element that can be used to impart health education or improve slow learners' abilities. In short, in a country like India, it is an ideal tool, a Bear with a Conscience to benefit the economically challenged in society as well as serve as a profitable proposition business wise."

Murjnai then goes on a to relate a story of how in America a young woman's concern for her ill and ageing father led her to Build-A-Bear for him while he was in the intensive care unit of a N.Y hospital. "She had it put by his bedside and a couple of days later he recovered consciousness. When he could speak again he said that he had had a strong feeling that his daughter had been by his bedside all the while. Of course, it wasn't the daughter who had been with him since she hadn't been allowed inside. It was the teddy bear that she had crafted with such love and concern that had given him such a strong impression of her reassuring touch being by him," says the man who is determined to launch his Build-A-Bear project by 2008 in India.

Another incident he relates is about how a child with terminal cancer went to Build-A-Bear with his mother. After the bear was made, the child hugged it and gave it to his mom saying "Mom, I'll always be with you." :The child died two months later but today the bear is still with the mom and helps fill an unbearable void in her life."
A percentage of the proceeds that Murjani makes from the sales of Build-A-Bear will go to charity, as will a percentage of the proceeds of all his businesses in India. "Every aspect of our business will associate itself with investing in India's underprivileged including the looking after of elderly people," says the man who laments the fact that after years of bringing up their children, elderly folk in this country often get a short shrift from theif heirs. This is an issue he is determined to address with contributions to the care of the elderly that should do a mite for those senior citizens within his ambit who need medical attention and caretaking.

Murjani recalls a warm loving childhood in Post-Partition India where growing up in the abundant love of aunts and grandparents "I was one of the luckiest people alive". In his words, "I was spoilt rotten with love, taught meaningful values and this makes me want to give back some of the abundance I have revised." This astute businessman and profit seeker says without sounding false or contrived "When i was growing, I was always close to saints and holy men. Even today, when I go to bed every day, I ask myself, 'Who did I help today?' If I haven't helped somebody in some way, no matter how small, then it is a wasted day!' this is the family man and multi millionaire speaking the man who genuinely believes that "We are all instruments of God. Some of us are used for good and some of us otherwise, yet the greatest blessing is to live one's life for a positive purpose."

So then, you perhaps now know why Mike Murjani wants to Build-A-Bear...?