Odisha Channel Bureau
PURI: An International Case Symposium in Fashion Retail & Management hosted by NIFT, Bhubaneswar made a colourful start at Toshali Sands Resort, near Puri yesterday.Sudhir Tripathi, Director General of NIFT inaugurated the symposium in a glittering ceremony with lighting of lamp in presence of top executives from fashion & lifestyle industry, academicians, scholars, researchers & fashion management students.
Tripathi emphasized the importance of case study as a method of teaching from his own experience in Harvard Business School and appreciated the efforts of NIFT Bhubaneswar faculty in bridging the gap between academia & industry through the symposium.Bikram Patnaik, Director (Merchandising), Nike, India explained how digital revolution is changing the way business is being conducted and online shopping is empowering the consumers like never before.
Anthony Kent from Nottingham Trent University, UK and the keynote speaker of the symposium spoke about the integration of retail and online store with enriched customer experience through intense use of technology such as 3‐D virtual imaging.He presented a case study on retail giant Harrods and the future of fashion merchandising.K.C.S.Ray, Director, NIFT described the case study as an Indian concept adopted in the ancient Indian education system through story telling.He explained as to how the symposium is going to make a difference in fashion education of the country in general and NIFT in particular.
In afternoon plenary session Vandana Bhandari, Dean, NIFT presided a session on handloom and handicrafts retailing with very interesting inputs from Atul Arora, Senior category manager from Snapdeal, Ganesh Prabhu from IIM, Bangalore, and Preeti Ramanathan, Co-Founder Agventues-social enterprise.Four technical sessions were conducted throughout the day where more than 30 case studies were presented.
