Flipkart launches online fashion platform, Trendstalk

Flipkart has launched Trendstalk, an online platform that has information on latest international fashion trends such as colour palettes, cuts, designs, fabric direction and forecasts. This enables sellers to create products that are in tune with international trends. For this, the Indian e-commerce major has partnered with Italian fashion company Pitti Immagine, India’s Arvind and fshion designers Timzy Batra and Prithvi Rao. This initiative will help sellers on its marketplace to create designs in line with the latest global trends. Also, the e-tailer has started organising offline workshops every season to help sellers adhere to international trends.

This initiative will expose sellers to the latest designing techniques, creative directors, buyers, clothing companies, producers and exporters in India. It will also help them come out of traditional design set-up through ‘globally targeted tools and trend application methods’. Earlier this data was available only to large fashion houses. Trendstalk will help Flipkart to target 5,000 independent fashion category sellers.

Rishi Vasudev, VP (fashion), Flipkart believes that this format will help to democratise fashion and give a chance to ‘budding designers, exporters and brands to create a niche for themselves in line with current and next season trends’. After all, it makes sense because fashion is the e-tailer’s fastest expanding category with a growth rate of 10 per cent every month.

It is the growth in e-commerce which has benefitted the fashion category most, largely due to easy and free returns, innovative visualisation tools and customer reviews. In fact, according to a report, clothes, accessories and shoes are the most browsed and bought items online.