How YouTube rescued Kerala's Kuthampully handloom village

Simple, elegant, cheerfully traditional. At many bends on Kuthampully Road, you will find Subhash Balasubramanyan, 45, draped in a trendy Kuthampully handloom mundu (dhoti) and kurta set, beaming from giant hoardings. To customers visiting Kuthampully, he is the public face of Subhash Textiles, one of nearly 150 shops selling the legendary Kuthampully clothes along the 2 km road and its narrow lanes.

But his wife Sudhamani is the star of the shop's online customers. Clad in the latest Kuthampully sari, she’s the face of Subhash Textiles’ YouTube channel, bringing the brand to life for their digital audience. Every evening, she uploads a new video, showcasing their shop’s latest sari designs to the channel’s growing fan base.

"I upload one video on YouTube almost every day,” Sudhamani says nonchalantly. “It’s just part of the daily routine." These videos make their way to Instagram and WhatsApp groups,  expanding the shop’s reach.

“All our videos, shorts, and reels are shot right here in the shop,” Subhash explains. “We just use an iPhone and a microphone. One of our staff helps with editing, and the video is uploaded by evening.”

With a solid subscriber base, Subhash Textiles' YouTube channel is a small-town success story. Not bad for a modest textile shop nestled in a four-century-old weaving village on the outskirts of Kerala’s Thrissur district.

Tradition goes online

Over 100 of the nearly 150 shops in Kuthampully have set up their own YouTube channels and Instagram accounts to sell the saris, mundu, and other Kuthampully garments which are woven into Kerala’s festive traditions. The shift to online marketing and e-commerce has breathed new life into the Kuthampully tradition.

Kuthampully's weavers and retailers faced huge challenges during the Kerala floods and the Covid pandemic. However, the village has made a remarkable comeback, thanks to social media and digital marketing. What was once a fading tradition, threatened by cheap knock-offs and changing consumer habits, has now found a new, wide audience.  The story of Kuthampully’s resurgence is a powerful reminder of how tradition and technology can come together to protect people's livelihoods along with cultural heritage.

Social media promotion: A pandemic pivot

“We stumbled upon social media promotion and online sales in the early phase of the Covid pandemic,” says Vinod G., owner of Vikram Handloom Fabrics and General Secretary of the Kuthampully Sree Sowdeswari Amman Textile Dealers Association. He recalls how they discovered the power of this modern tool for marketing their age-old craft, which was fast fading.

In 2020, Covid was raging. Weddings were postponed, celebrations and festivals were scrapped, and demand for Kuthampully clothes plummeted. “We were sitting on piles of unsold stock,” Vinod says.

Known for its handloom saris and dhotis, this historic weaving village, located near the confluence of the Gayathri and Bharatappuzha rivers, faced an existential crisis. The textile shops and around 800 families relying on them for their livelihood struggled to stay afloat during the pandemic.

The pandemic wasn’t Kuthampully’s first brush with hardship. The GST crisis, demonetisation, and the Kerala floods of 2017 and 2018 had already crippled the industry. Powerlooms—churning out cheaper, mass-produced versions of Kuthampully’s handloom products—had cut into demand. The younger generation had started turning away from the labour-intensive craft.

`Covid turned positive for us'

“But Covid forced us to find immediate alternatives to increase demand and sustain the industry,” Vinod says. Necessity became the mother of invention. People like Subhash, Saravana Neythukada’s Surjith, and Prakash Kadammankod of Ramachandra Handlooms first experimented with WhatsApp groups, which was very encouraging. They then moved on to Facebook, and finally to YouTube, which became a game changer.

Surjith and Prakash, like many other retailers, present their products on their channels themselves. Several others hire external experts or have their staff promote their products online. Surjith had previously tasted the benefits of online promotion when actress Poornima Indrajith showcased some of his shop’s saris on her channel. Half of his sales are now online.

E-commerce and social media promotion of Kuthampully’s handloom, powerloom, and silk products quickly gained traction. For Covid-weary customers, too scared to shop in person, online ordering was a relief. And for the shops, it was a low-cost, low-effort way to reach a wider audience.

Though custom-bound, many family-run businesses were quick to adapt, with the tech-savvy younger generation leading the charge. The unsold stock began flying off the shelves, and tradition and technology made peace. After all, survival was the top priority.

“Our online business is booming,” Subhash says, beaming. “During the Onam and Vishu festivals, we can barely keep up with demand!”

Prakash recounts how orders flooded in from 42 countries this Onam season. “Malayalee NRIs were placing orders for their Onam celebrations abroad.” On his YouTube channel, he himself is the brand ambassador, influencer, and presenter.

A win-win for customers and sellers

Online selling has been a win-win for the customers and the village's retailers.  “In the old days, we sold the clothes to a series of middlemen. By the time the product reached the customer, the price often tripled. "Now, we sell directly to the customer—no middlemen involved. Customers pay less, but get more options.”  Backed by social media promotion, most of his sales are now online. 

He employs 16 people to handle online sales. "They’re not staff," he notes with a grin. "They work on commission, so they’re all mini-entrepreneurs themselves.” 

Sudhamani explains how online sales work: “In the videos, I talk about the designs, colours, and fabrics. Customers send us screenshots of what they want via WhatsApp. We send them back photos of the actual product for confirmation; then they place the orders and pay online. Simple!” No credit, no waiting for payments.

What about shipping? That’s mostly handled by India Post, which Subhash praises. “Deliveries within Kerala take about 3-4 days and cost only Rs 40 to Rs 80 per package. Private couriers handle some of the shipping. To cash in on the online sales boom, many courier companies have recently opened their offices in the village.

However, many small, one-room retailers said they prefer in-person sales. “You come to my shop to buy just one sari, but after seeing my designs, you might be tempted to buy five more—big scope for upselling,” one retailer quipped.

From Mysore with looms

Kuthampully’s handloom weaving history stretches back to the 17th century. legend has it that the king of Kochi invited skilled weavers from the Kannada Devanga Chettiar community from the Kingdom of Mysore to settle at Kuthampully. The village, now part of the Thiruvilwamala panchayat in Thrissur district, borders Palakkad.

“They chose to set up their looms and homes close to the Bharatappuzha River, as handloom weaving required a lot of water,” explains Surjith. Today, there are an estimated 800 Devanga households in the village. The community is closely knit, and its members still speak Kannada among themselves. Over 90% of the weavers and retailers belong to the Devanga Chettiar caste.

Down the centuries, Kuthampully weavers specialised in creating kasavu saris (plain cream saris with a broad gold zari border), kasavu set saris (a two-piece sari-like garment), and kasavu mundu (dhoti for men). The kasavu’s blend of simplicity and grandeur made these garments the preferred choice for weddings, festivals like Onam and Vishu, and other formal celebrations. Naturally, Onam and Vishu are peak business periods for both online and offline shops.

Handloom or powerloom?

However, the handloom landscape has drastically shrunk over the decades. At one time, there were around 4,000 looms in the village, but only a few hundred survive today, notes Pramod Kumar of P.V. Ramaswamy & Sons, one of the largest wholesale shops in the village, which owns the popular Ramson’s brand textiles.

Pramod points out that only a tiny fraction of the clothes sold are now woven on looms in Kuthampully; most are made by powerlooms in large textile mills in Tamil Nadu. "Less than 5% of garments are actually woven in Kuthampully," agrees Praveen of Ramaswamy & Co. “The cost and time involved in handloom production are much higher, and hence the product price too."

“Though the garments come from powerloom mills in Tamil Nadu, the designs are ours, created here in the village,” explains another retailer. One retailer, who wished to remain anonymous, remarked: “There’s no point in pretending Kuthampully is still a handloom village.” 

The kasavu tradition 

While Kuthampully is traditionally known for kasavu saris and mundu, in recent times the village has also sold colour saris, silk saris, and a wide range of garments aimed at the wedding market under the Kuthampully label. Most of these products come from Tamil Nadu and Karnataka.

Vinod agrees that Kuthampully must move with the times to meet new customer demands but insists it should not compromise on quality or tradition. “Innovative designs are the hallmark of Kuthampully clothes,” says Prakash of Ramachandra Handlooms. He points out that, in the past, one sari design would last for three years. Now, however, post-Covid demand and changes in customer habits are forcing retailers to introduce new designs every three months.

There are around 150 printing units in Kuthampully, but concerns over water contamination and air pollution have led authorities to impose stricter control measures. As a result, a substantial part of the printing now takes place in Tamil Nadu.

Plenty of options, designs

“You have plenty of options and designs in Kuthampully garments now, and the prices are very affordable; these factors attract customers to this genre of textiles,” says Vinod.

Vinod suggests that Kuthampully could become a nationally recognised textile trading hub rather than a manufacturing centre. His association is currently working towards establishing a unified Kuthampully label. Such branding, he believes, is essential for the genre's survival.

Kuthampully’s resurgence post-Covid by applying technology to tradition and tuning into customers' fast-changing tastes is a lesson for so many traditional industries in India.