Men race to match women in online as shoppers

Women are considered avid online shoppers but men are now giving them stiff competition in the apparel categories and taking the lead in foot-wear and accessories.

Rishi Vasudev, Vice President (Fashion, Home and Furniture) at Flipkart says that over the years, there is foraying more and more into fashion online. Market size of both men's and women's clothing online is at neck and neck now. However, in terms of footwear and accessories, men's market online is far ahead.

According to Vasudev, men's footwear was the highest e-commerce penetrated fashion category and was expected to grow the fastest in the next two years with an online penetration close to 18 per cent (while clothing will be in the 5-6 per cent range).

He says that with men's footwear exploding in the next few years, Flipkart was poised to take up a large share of this market, close to 45 per cent. 55 and 60 million consumers are currently buying fashion products online, with the market becoming bigger. Male fashion buying is expected to give an extra fillip to this growth.

Another trend in India is women tend to shop for their partners or male family members and find it a task to get them to come out and shop, hence they end up finding the e-retail platform convenient.

Men are very confident to buy online as they know what they want and shop directly for these products and that is the reason their visits to online shopping had increased, says Samantha Chilton, Head of Design at Koovs.

Online shopping is now making men more trend-aware as it enables brands to showcase looks and help men to evolve their look, says Chilton adding that Koovs menswear had grown consistently since its launch in 2014 to 40 per cent of their sales now.