Myntra all set to bring offline fashion brands to customers
Walmart-owned fashion retailer Myntra has come up with a strategy to help brands and offline stores reach customers. This would enable them to scale up their business, which has been impacted by the coronavirus (Covid-19) pandemic.
The firm has built an omnichannel network, where it has partnered several brands to have their products delivered directly from their offline stores, nearest to the customer’s residence. The aim is to get the items delivered within a day or two.
“Even before Covid, we had been working on how to bring offline and online (retail) together and augment the experiences that one will get in a store. We could actually expose an inventory of a store in Kolkata to somebody in Chennai,” Myntra Chief Executive Amar Nagaram said.
“So, all of these investments happened and then Covid hit us. We went back to the whiteboard to figure out how we can help brand partners. We helped them with all the data insights about what consumers are thinking and the new normalcy. We realised that offline stores are suffering because of the lockdown and safety apprehensions. So, we wanted to take this investment (omnichannel network) to reality much faster than we initially thought.”
Nagaram said now hundreds of high-street and mall stores have been successful in delivering thousands of items to customers.
Myntra plans to launch over 150 brands from more than 3,000 highstreet and mall stores in the next six
months. It estimates 20-30 per cent sales for brand stores will come from this channel in the 6-12 months.
The firm has partnered large fashion groups such as Arvind and Aditya Birla Fashion Retail for the omnichannel network.
The other top brands include Fossil, Anita Dongre, Mango, Charles and Keith, Globus, Iconic, and Red Tape. The number of stores is based on the store coverage of each brand in malls and high-street. It varies between 20 stores and over 200 stores for each brand.
For stores and customers located within the same city, hyper-local and next day deliveries are possible.
Presently, customers don’t know location from where their products get shipped. However, in future, they would be informed of the stores’ names. “This is the new future of retailing that we are looking at, and at Myntra, we are expected to lead the way,” said Nagaram.
Myntra said its platform is optimised
to seamlessly onboard hundreds of brands or stores. Every order is processed in real-time through a decision engine to identify the most suitable store for the customer. This includes speed, quality, and availability, resulting in better load balances through most efficient paths.
Thus, every store turns into a “mini fulfilment centre”.
It has also set up a “hyper care team” that works closely with every store for remote assistance through a central store monitoring system.
The company successfully integrated its omnichannel network during its recently held End of Reason Sale (EORS). This resulted in enhanced shopper experience and higher sales volumes at offline retail stores of partner brands.
According to experts, fashion is a $100-billion market in the country with only 6 per cent having been penetrated by online retail players, including Flipkart and Amazon.