Fabindia is an Indian chain store retailing garments, home-decor, furnishings, fabrics and products handmade by craftspeople across rural India.

In 1964, Bissell met British designer Terence Conran, whose newly established home furnishing retail company, Habitat, soon became one of their biggest customers.

Bissell travelled across craft-based villages and towns in India, meeting weavers and entrepreneurs who would produce flat weaves, pale colors, and precise weights in handloom yardage.

This was also the height of the Indian Emergency period (1975–1976), when the rule barring commercial establishments from being operated at residential properties was implemented, forcing the company from its secondary premises, a house on the Mathura Road, and prompting Bissell to open the first Fabindia retail store in Greater Kailash, N-Block market in New Delhi, in 1976 that remains its registered office.

For this, designers were enlisted to modernize its line of home linens and, most importantly, introduced a range of ready-to-wear garments, including churidar-kurta suits for women and men's shirts.

The result was that traditional apparel and products became mainstream, fashionable, and quickly adopted by a growing Indian middle-class and identified as the brand for the elite and intellectual as well as affordable ethnic chic.

[4][8][9] Fabindia lost its biggest customer, UK-based Habitat, in 1992, when the latter was bought by Ikano group, founder of IKEA, which then decided to appoint its own buying agent in India.

The following year, John Bissell suffered a stroke, and his son William gradually took over the helm, completing the leadership transition after the death of his father in 1998 at the age 66.

[15][16] In 2005, Fabindia became a founder-member of All India Artisans and Craft Workers Welfare Association (AIACA), along with Pritam Singh (Anokhi), Ritu Kumar, Madhukar Khera and Laila Tyabji (Dastkar).

[20] On 3 April 2015, Union Minister of Human Resource Development, Smriti Irani allegedly spotted a camera positioned to record near a changing room, at an outlet of Fabindia in Candolim, Goa.

[21] A local court later came down heavily on the Calangute police saying that they exercised their power of arrest arbitrarily against four staff members of Fabindia's Candolim outlet who were held late on 3 April.

"[22] On 8 April 2015 company's Managing Director William Bissell, its former chief executive officer Subrata Dutta, regional manager Ruchira Puri, marketing chief Ramu Chandra, stores in-charge Kundan Gupta, E-commerce head Arun Naikar and category head Ashima Agarwal have sought anticipatory bail to avoid arrest in district court in Mapusa town.