My Experience with Pensee Leathers:
I had initially called Karlsons (taken from TBHP Bangalore Directory) for a quote for my new
Liva GDSP. Couldn't catch hold of their owner, one of their store managers (dont remember his name though) attended to me on phone and patiently explained their offerings. 2 things that they could have been better:
1. Flexibility: They had asked me to be present in person for taking an apointment & choose the color, design, etc... I had called them last Tuesday and the next available apointments were for Saturday (only if I could confirm on the very same day) or the next tuesday. I even asked if I could book an apointment by sending a part-payment through NEFT, which was not agreed. So the only possibility was that I have to drive all the way to Indira Nagar twice. Once for booking + choice freeze + advance and the second time for getting the job done.
2. Price: For art-leather seat covers + genuine leather steering wheel + Genuine leather door trims, the price quoted was 17,200 (Complete Genuine Leather seating was quoted as 35K). No doscounts, he rather quoted "I'll give you the best fitments instead". As far as I have checked, this is way expensive in the market.
Browsed the directory again and called Mr. Sathish of Pensee Leathers. As many have already discussed in the Forum, they have 3 grades: Art Leather, Automotive grade and the Genuine Leather. I chose to go with a mid-ranged Automotive grade + leather finishes.
Over the phone, he quoted a total of INR 13,100 for Automotive Grade Seatings + Genuine Leather Steering Wheels, Genuine Leather Gear knob, Gear boot, Genuine leather Brake levers and Genuine leather door trims. This directly is INR 4100 lesser than Karlssons and I got all-Leather Brake handle, Gear knob, gear boot additionally included for the same price.
If one needs only the seat covers, Pensee guys come to your doorstep and do the complete job. Since my case included Door trims and other leather inserts, he insisted that I will have to visit their factory to get the Leather job done. Nevertheless, he had agreed to visit me the very next day with all sample materials and designs for the concept-freeze at my home. Since both me and my wife are working, I had asked Sathish to visit me before 7:00 AM. He said, I can be there even before. I only thought "another fellow Indian, if I say 6.30, he might reach at 7". Asked him to drop down at 6.30 AM.
To my surprise, I received an SMS at 6:20 AM from Sathish that he has already crossed Silk-Board fly over. I called him immediately and after route guidance, he arrived at my door-step exactly at 6:28 AM with his well-maintained Red Swift VDI. I was taken aback with this guy's commitment to work, decided the very moment that he is the one for the interor finishings on my car!
He had the samples from all 3 grades of materials, color samples and design photos on his laptop. in 45 mins, my wife made several comparisions and we decided on a Beige shade that was close to the Beige interiors of our new Liva GDSP. We could visualise that this would really make the car look much more elegant. Though Beige option was available in the Genuine Leather segments too, we chose to go for black for all the Genuine Leather fitments & inserts, as it would be easy to maintain. Paid an advance of 3ooo INR and we fixed that I can bring my car to his Factory the next day at 5:00 PM in the evening. (This was the earliest possible from my office).
Few updates regarding his location:
1. The roads are new now, no hassles reaching his factory
2. From Banshankari, drive in the direction of Metro Mall. Cross a signal after Metro and take the first next left "jungle-route". No major land-marks there though. His calm factory is some 1.5 kms from there.
I reached there at 5:15 PM. His boys immediately started off with work. In my experience, his team did a good job. The hand-stitched on leather inserts (steering and gear knob) were quite impressive too! By 9:00 PM, the job was fully done - it was a pleasure to watch your job done there LIVE. I did demand for a few corrections / updates when they were stitching. most of which were met too. This is the best part of being present when your job is on-going.
I have installed a Pioneer Double DIN touch-screen (2490BT) as the HU. Since there is no sun-film installed (I want to wait until a REAL judgement comes on this topic), I always wanted to hide this ICE HU which could attract any novice thief to break-open my car. Especially since my car is usually parked on street in front of my home (no covered parking available), I am not so comfortable on safety of this ICE setup. Pensee offered me an innovative solution to this problem. They had stitched a Genuine Beige leather cover (that exactly fit over the HU) with a patch of Velcro hooks. Another patch of Velcro loops was pasted on a double-side sticker (the one used to stick God-idols in the front cabin). With this setup, I have a Genuine Leather HU-cover which is almost not noticeable to a tress-passer. Since the color of this leather is almost matching to the car interior / cabin color, it is difficult to find that there is an expensive HU installed inside. Additionally, since this is a leather fitment, it adds to the interior's looks. This setup came as a Bonus-Solution FREE OF COST!!! Thanks to Sathish and team, these guys are genuinely service oriented & have passion to grow big. I am not sure if their competition would have done this, as it is a considerable sized Leather-piece + Velcro patches + stitching costs.
In my view, they have the below two advantages:
1. Location: They are'nt located in the heart of the city and hence no extra expenses on rent & infrastructure.
2. Marketing: These guys are silently doing an excellent job without much of marketing expenses. Most of their customers are through their existing customer's recommendations.
Any regular competitor to them normally don't have these advantages and obviously charge this back to their customers.
As a conservative buyer, these are the best "take-away" points that gave me an excellent VFM tag with absolutely NO compromise on quality.
So, at INR 10,500, the complete PU upholstry + Leather inserts were quite satisfyingly done and I am a happy customer to Pensee. As of today, I can definitely recommend them to any prospective Auto-Head. Good Luck with them guys!
Please: I have not taken the pictures yet. Will post them by this weekend, sorry for this delay guys!