Fabfurnish changes business strategy to thrive in the competitive market

Online furniture retailer FabFurnish is undergoing massive tactical business modelling to thrive in the competitive online furniture market. In addition to providing exquisite furniture at reasonable prices, the company will now also be looking to offer an entire range of home design and décor services to all its prospective customers.

The changes come a couple of months after the senior director Ankita Dabas to take over the reign as the new CEO of FabFurnish from the founding members Vikram Chopra and Mehul Agrawal.

Miss Davas appears to be very focused in her plans as she cuts down 50 previous employees to hire 15 new minds across the design, content and marketing wings including the big names like interior designer Aprajita Suri Davar. Tanuj Ahuja was appointed as the new senior creative director as Miss Davas also stressed to fill up the key positions of CTO and marketing manager with some big names as well.

Changes in the Business Model: All-in-one Home Décor Solution

Stepping away from the sole recognition as a mere online furniture retailer, the Rocket Internet-backed company is looking to establish itself as an end-to-end, all under one roof, home décor and interiors solution store to go toe to toe with other online competitive playerslike Urban Ladder, Liv-Space and HomeLane. The company is looking forward to present itself as an online merchandiser of home décor products by working with vendors and tying up with premium brands in sector from India and abroad, increasing their catalogue in the process.

The move to offer curated packaged products is aimed at increasing the average sell by compelling the users to buy a range of products, which in turn, will increase the profit margin by about 5% to propel them forward in their goal to close the financial year with INR 500 crore revenue. In the process, while the private label players will gain up to 50% margin, the marketplaces on the other hand, will make over their usual margin of 15-25% in the furniture category.

Future Plans

Along with the current FabFurnish online virtual home display that allows the customers to visualize their customized home looks and choose the right product accordingly, the company is also looking to offer customized products also to complete a desired look by this year end. In addition to that adding on-call interior designer service to their portfolio is also in the pipeline due to come live around the same time. With FabFurnish revealing their plans to raise $50 million funds from existing investors like Rocket Internet and Kinnevik and possibilities of a merger with global home decor players like Home 24, Westwing and Zanui, FabFurnish sure to buzz the sector in coming days by going global in a big way.

Future of Online Furniture Retail

When it comes to necessities, the need of furniture and home décor is ever present. Everyone wants to design their home interiors in such a way that it reflects their personality. Hence, in this era when the online retail is on the rise, furniture and home décor products are on the prime list of its selling chart. With customers having the opportunity to select from a range of products and acquire the same at a reasonably cheaper price just by sitting at home, this domain is destined to shoot higher with every passing time. Significant efforts from the online furniture and home décor sellers like providing professional interior decoration and design accompanied with quicker installation, also giving the customers more reasons to opt for their services.

Customers’ Concerns

Having stated the pros of the online furniture retail, it is justified to state their laggings also from a neutral perspective. With ever increasing craze of online furniture and home décor product purchasing, comes the problem of consistency of the quality of product delivered. Products delivered are often found to not match the exact specifications stated on the website. In addition, the delivered product is found to have manufacturing defect or are delivered in tampered condition.

Apart from these, even when the products match the mentioned specifications on the website the products often don’t stand up to the expectations in the quality and “feel” factor. This also highlights the incompleteness of the mentioned product specifications which often serves to misguide the customers. Although the furniture etailers have taken up required measures to counter these laggings, as of now they are still behind in eradicating the problem from the core.