Fashionandyou enters new categories to push up business

Backed by credible investors like Sequoia, Norwest, Intel and Nokia, leading e-commerce flash sale portal Fashionandyou.com has got an investment of $50 million (about Rs 270 crores) collectively. Elaborating on their growth plans,

Abhishek Goyal, CEO, Fashionandyou.com says, “We are not planning to go externally raise capital in the first half of next year, post which we will decide based on market situation. Though, we are always open to joining hands with the right partner, who have conviction and long term view on online retail.” While women’s fashion is the main focus area, the company is foraying into home, jewelry and kids’ wear offering almost 50 per cent offs on MRPs.

Fashionandyou is a marketplace for brands to showcase their products. It does not enable them to run their own stores, but gives them dedicated space on the website. Explains Goyal, “We put 15 events everyday and typical duration of an event is between three to seven days. At any point, consumers can find 15,000 styles live on our website. Our key proposition is that one finds a lot of new styles everyday, and this generated sustainable excitement among our consumers. Hence they look forward to visiting us.”

Women’s apparel is one of the most sought after categories on Fashionandyou. With consumers’ outlook towards online purchase of clothes changing, the platform has tried to reduce size and colour related challenges. “We have done a lot of things in this direction e.g. showing size charts which consumers can understand easily, use of colorimeter during cataloguing to reduce color disparity. With apparels, there are sub-categories which have lesser degree of challenges, hence see more uptake than others. Selection and value are the key drivers for consumers to come online and shop. Apparel is among the most profitable categories in online retail in India today,” Goyal says.

He says, they don’t have all the sizes all the time, but buyers typically filter by size initially only and can see relevant designs. So it doesn’t hamper their experience. Reducing dependence on touch and feel is one of the keys to success in successfully selling apparels online. “Biggest driver for consumer is value and selection, and most of our effort goes in solving that i.e. helping women find the design which they love at Rs 600 online whereas similar designs in traditional offline markets are available at Rs 1,000 or more, is the key driver for consumers. We want consumers to feel that they are saving (and not spending) when they shop with us.”