Digitalfirst retailers eye offline presence
A slew of e-commerce startups including Ratan Tata-backed Teabox, fashion retailer Myntra, e-cosmetics firm Nykaa, and even names that are just over a year old, like custom-made men’s clothing brand Stylior, plan to experiment with offline stores in an attempt to establish deeper customer connect and as part of their omni-channel strategy.
The offline strategies vary, with Nykaa planning to open 30 stores while Myntra, which opened its first physical store in Bengaluru in March only, plans to open a couple of such more stores.
“We are getting into our own experiential stores. The way we are looking at these is not from a sales perspective but from a pure-play experience perspective. But the good thing we have seen is if ten people come and try a product, four are pretty much instant converts,” said Kaushal Dugar, founder and chief executive officer of Teabox, a Bengaluru-based start-up that sells premium tea across the globe through its website.
Teabox currently operates a physical shop-in-shop store in Cinnamon - a high-end destination for designer lifestyle products housed in a bungalow in central Bengaluru. The firm expects to open four of its own experiential stores over the next two years – one in Bengaluru, one in Mumbai and two in National Capital Region (NCR).
Myntra opened its first physical retail store in March for its private label, Roadster, in Bengaluru’s Indiranagar area. The firm plans to open stores for two of its other private labels - All About You and HRX - over the next year or two and will take a call on whether it ought to open additional Roadster stores in six months.
“As brands reach a certain scale, it’s important for them to have an offline presence so that you can start to touch and feel the product and you can give the consumer a 360 (degree) experience. In the first month we’ve had almost 35,000+ footfalls (in the Roadster store). Of the 35,000 people who showed up, a lot more people spent more time in the store,” said Myntra CEO Ananth Narayanan.
Stylior, a bespoke men’s clothing brand that offers customised formals, has only been in operation since early 2016 and is already getting into the physical world with its first store set to open in Bengaluru next week. The firm plans to open six stores in total by next year.