Myntra’s Offline Push: 1st Physical Store To Open In next 90 Days; Collaboration With Retail Stores For Faster Returns
India’s very own, home grown fashion portal Myntra is now taking the right steps, at the right time. After returning to desktop mode, which indirectly helped to them clock a massive 23x more sales during their ‘End of Reason Sale’, they have decided to venture out into the physical world.
In a decision which would have far reaching consequences for not only Myntra, but other ecommerce portals (especially those who are into fashion niche), their first physical store will open in the next three months.
As per reports coming in, Myntra’s first outlet would either open in New Delhi or Bengaluru. Exclusive brands owned by them would be the first to populate this store.
CEO of Myntra, Ananth Narayanan, said, “We are exploring omni-channel. We should be able to create a physical store in the next three months. We plan to launch omni-channel with our private brands — Roadster, HRX and All About You,”
Myntra’s Diversifying Phase Is On
Besides opening their physical outlet, Myntra has cleverly decided to diversify into other segments within lifestyle and fashion.
For instance, home-furnishing. After they ventured into this category three months back, they have witnessed whooping 50-60% growth every month, and right now, this niche constitute 1% of their overall revenues.
Besides focussing on home furnishing from now, Myntra is also keen to expand with fine jewellery, personal care business and other niche categories.
Ananth said, “With fine jewellery, there is a question of security, expanding the number of pin codes we can service and ensuring that the gold jewellery being returned after 10 days is the same. These will need technology solutions..”
Myntra has made it very clear that their expansion mode would be now determined by providing high quality products, via omni-sales channels and not discounts which was the norm earlier.
Offline Push Is The Need Of The Hour
Flipkart, which owns Myntra has already ventured deep into expanding offline, as they launched their ‘Experience Zones’ across 10 cities, and enabled ‘Click and Collect’ feature as well.
Last month, Amazon too embraced offline retail as they partnered with Vodafone to provide touch and feel experience for those customers, who are still reluctant to buy online.
Besides, Apple has already received approval for opening their outlets pan-India; and Xiaomi, LeEco , Motorola and OnePlus are already present in the offline retail.
If we talk about fashion niche, then Aditya Birla’s Abof has recently acquired retail chain Forever21, which clearly showcases that online-only mode is now gradually transforming into a mixture of offline-online platform.
It would be interesting to observe, how this new model of offline integrated with online and mobile works for ecommerce brands. Will social media and digital marketing influence the buyers to visit the brand’s offline stores? Or the offline customers would be influenced to buy via online channels?
Do share your views by commenting right here!
