Online apparel brands see longer shelf life offline

Selling goods online has its own limitation — only 3% of overall retail spending happens through e-commerce. To put things in context, India’s $600-billion retail business will grow to $1 trillion by 2020.

“Many people don’t know about Fab Alley because they do not shop online,” said Shivani Poddar, co-founder of the online fast-fashion portal, which has started opening outlets four years after its launch.

The growth in India’s retail spending has attracted foreign labels such as Zara, H&M and Gap in the past few years and online fashion portals want a share of this growth. (Livemint)

Selling goods online has its own limitation — only 3% of overall retail spending happens through e-commerce. To put things in context, India’s $600-billion retail business will grow to $1 trillion by 2020.

The growth in India’s retail spending has attracted foreign labels such as Zara, H&M and Gap in the past few years. Poddar wants a bite of that market. “Our stores will be present beside brands such as Vero Moda, Forever 21 and Zara,” she said.

With an average online transaction value of 1,250, Fab Alley has got some internet popularity. That is because it launches 300 new styles every month, and takes out 250, to keep the collection fresh.

Poddar is looking 90 crore in revenues this financial year, 20% of that will come from retail stores.

But Fab Alley isn’t the only one; more than a dozen brands that started on the internet are opening stores.

Fab Alley’s competitor Harpa and Yepme, lingerie labels such as Zivame and Clovia and kids brand FirstCry are a few of them.

FirstCry started the transition in 2011. It already has 170 stores. “More than 90% of customers are still offline – that will not change – we realised that. It is hard to convert an offline shopper online,” said Supam Maheshwari, CEO and founder of FirstCry.

The company uses technology to keep prices same online and in its stores, and so does Yepme. “We use the same technology to manage inventory, pricing and supply chain for the products we sell online and offline… All our outlets are like our miniwarehouses,” said Vivek Gaur, co-founder of Yepme.

That allows Yepme to offer the same discounts offline and online. Gaur plans to have an outlet in each of the 550 district headquarters, and similar to Fab Alley, it plans to take on H&M and Marks & Spencers. “Our store in Noida’s Mall of India shares the wall with H&M,” Gaur said.

Starting online initially has its own benefits. “Online has a democratic environment, it is not swayed by distribution, it allows to collect feedback faster, and anything that doesn’t work we kill it instantaneously,” said Neha Kant, co-founder of Clovia, which has more than 2,000 bra styles live on its platform and is now opening stores.

This change from online to offline, might be the beginning of the rise of many new Indian brands.