Small towns drive luxury fashion growth

Sale of online luxury products is expanding in a big way. The confidence comes from a growing base of consumers who are spending on luxury items. And the business is likely to see a growth in small towns.

Already business has been coming from non-metros, with consumers in smaller cities logging onto luxury sites. It’s a win-win situation for both. Small town consumers have exposure and aspirations while luxury sites provide access and availability.

RockNShop, a site of luxury products, is planning to introduce children’s luxury brands on the portal next month. Its founder Priya Sachdev plans to launch luxury home décor items soon. Exclusively, another luxury items site which was acquired by Snapdeal in February 2015, has been increasing its products portfolio every month. In last one year, Exclusively has grown 400 per cent, claims its CEO Amit Maheshwari. Similarly, Vijay K G, CEO and Founder of the four-month-old luxury site Luxepolis plans to add to its beauty category.

Forty per cent of Luxepolis’s consumers are from Dehradun, Indore, Nagpur, Amritsar, Kochi, Gangtok and Visakhapatnam. Here the consumers have money but no access to luxury products. Exposure has made them aware and so they log on to these luxury portals to access the products. For Exclusively, a New York-based company selling in 150 countries before it was acquired by Snapdeal, Ahmedabad and Pune are the rapidly growing markets.

As Maheshwari points out, in online one can ‘cover 3,000 km north and south from the same platform’.