How Aspiring Companies In Fashion Industry Can Enter This Highly Competitive eRetail Market Successful e-commerce is about having the right orchestration of various activities that delivers an end-to-end shopping experience.
By Neeraj Chaudhary •
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Indian e-commerce industry, worth about USD 24 billion now, has seen a meteoric rise in 7 years from USD 3.8 billion in 2009. In India, we have an internet user-base of about 375 million (30% of population) as of Q1 of FY2016. Despite being the second largest user-base in world, only behind China (650 million, 48% of population), the penetration of eCommerce is low compared to markets like the United States or France.
This is, however, growing at an unprecedented rate, adding around 6 million new entrants every month. With this increasing internet user base, India's e-commerce market is likely to touch USD 38 billion mark in 2016, a massive jump over USD 23 billion in 2015. On the other hand, m-commerce is growing rapidly as a stable and secure supplement to e-commerce industry.
This digitization has transformed the face of businesses across the globe so much so that it has become imperative for entrepreneurs to go digital in order to maintain a competitive edge.
Being a fast growing sector it is lucrative for fashion and apparel manufacturing companies/ merchandisers/ brand owners to derive volume growth. However, due to infrastructural challenges, lack of outlook to innovate and other issues, aspiring fashion & apparel manufacturing companies/ merchandisers/ brand owners in India are still struggling to catch up with this trend.
To resolve this issue and give a technological fillip to fashion & apparel manufacturing companies/ merchandisers/ brand owners which still depend on offline selling due to infrastructure & manpower challenge, eShopBox came into being.
Being in this industry for long, we have seen that one of the biggest factor which lowers the profitability of the e-commerce firm is that they have done nothing to stop this industry from becoming discount driven industry which actually hurts the seller and these firms too. They should work on making this product driven industry rather than discount driven. Many things can be done from their end since they are the one who are dealing with the end customers, like giving them future trend analysis in-advance, working on crating the products, providing sellers with the analysis basis on their products and its performance. Such kind of close monitoring will not only help in increasing volumes but will also help in lowering down the return percentages which also is a factor that hurts pockets of such firms.
There are many marketplaces who are operating only on fashion category such as Jabong, Myntra, Limeroad, etc. But there is none in this category which has been able to run successfully a complete marketplace on its own head other than fashion category. According to many studies, every third search on Google is related to fashion, so there is no doubt that this is one of the fastest growing sector in Indian online market. Even marketplaces which sell various categories including fashion apparels, their advertisements are majorly focused on fashion. Online market in India is driven by discounts, offers and heavy promotions. From sellers point of view, it becomes important that they take full advantage of these promotions with active involvement and being regularly updated both presence and fashion wise, so that when an end consumer reaches these platforms, they are present their at the right time with right kind of products.
We believe that there should be a distinct model and proficient management, which would provide end-to-end e-commerce solution services and allow retailers, manufacturers or brands to manage their complete digital presence with ease. We not only provide cost-effective services, latest technologies, fast growth and vast channel network, but also enable our client focus on its core competence of manufacturing.
Giving the fashion industry a different approach, our curation team gets in touch with clients to decide a range plan for their brand, collect feedback from the industry, suggest modifications and help them finalize a range for the products and register the client with various market places.
Taking complete care of the clients from their nascent stage for receiving exposure on national and international level, coupled with speedy fulfilment should be the approach every e-tail company should follow. What they can do here is help companies entering the segment achieve the edge and compete with established players with cost effective measures. They can also provide them information about their merchandising, help them deciding pricing for product & planning required stock levels, provides information about previous lot of the product (fabric, color, category, design, market data about demand of different styles & categories, etc. which help in maintaining the quality of product), compiled date-wise data about discounts on various market places, etc. to increase the volumes of business through our software.
Successful e-commerce is about having the right orchestration of various activities that delivers an end-to-end shopping experience. An eCommerce company should enable that and align the company's creative energy with client's business strategy to help brands deliver captivating online fashion shopping experience.
