Snapdeal to scale up in fashion through tie-ups with designers, brands!

Everyone in the online retail industry knows that fashion apparel and accessories is the leading product category in ecommerce, surpassed only by electronics. While Myntra is using this to its benefit by pushing its own in-house apparel brand and Jabong launching exclusive dress collections, Snapdeal has revealed its own unique strategy to cash in on this predicted growth in fashion apparel sales online.

Plan ahead

Racing ahead of its competitors, Snapdeal has a bright plan for its future. According to sources, it is planning to scale up its fashion offering by tying up with designers, brands and some of the erstwhile king retailers like Shoppers Stop. In the next fiscal, the company wants to facilitate fashion sales worth $2 billion or over Rs 12,400 crore.

This is not too ambitious, as one might think. Amit Maheshwari, Vice President, Fashion at Snapdeal reveals, “At present itself, almost 60% of the orders already come via fashion and lifestyle categories. The whole contribution of fashion and lifestyle categories to the top-line at present is close to 35%, but based on the given the responses from consumers, we’re confident that this will grow.”

In fact, the ecommerce platform has already begun their tie-ups. “We’ve collaborated with the Fashion Design Council of India to unveil our Designer Studio that will showcase premium designer wear. Separately, we’re also releasing brand stores in January and looking at furthermore celebrity endorsements,” Maheshwari explains.

Balm the blips

So who is Snapdeal aiming to attract with these grand fashion initiatives? Apparently, they want to focus on Tier 2 and 3 cities, which presently contribute to 12 per cent of fashion sales.  However, before scaling up so aggressively, we think it is important for Snapdeal to develop a serious strategy to sort out all the issues it has had in the past.

The numerous product delivery goof-ups that Snapdeal has had in the past have already shaken consumer trust. How effective will these plans for growth be, if their numbers of loyal customers are dwindling? The online retail industry is not all about big numbers. Especially in the Indian scenario, this growth has to be in sync with several measures taken to develop consumer trust. This is because Indian consumers are very peculiar and do not trust shopping online so easily. We think it’s high time Snapdeal balms its blips!