E-commerce firm Amazon India is expanding its online designer wear store and creating a specialty handicraft store as part of a strategy increasingly being adopted by online retailers to boost demand for products that don’t always sell briskly and customise their offering for individual users.
Amazon India (owned by Amazon Seller Services Pvt Ltd) will launch its “Crafted in India” online store this week, offering 3,500 handicraft products across 11 regions. The e-commerce firm will offer saris, shoes, handbags, jewellery and other handicrafts sourced from regional weavers and artisans.
“Our aim is to revive the authentic Indian handicrafts market and make every region’s iconic crafts accessible to customer across the country at affordable prices,” said Susan Saideman, vice president, global vendor management, Amazon com Inc.
“Looking at the modern-day sensibilities in fashion today, the store is designed to offer a wide array of selection suited to varying tastes and style preferences of our customers. It’s one of our top festive offerings this season and we will continue to introduce more over the next few months.”
The e-commerce firm is also expanding its designer wear store ahead of the Amazon Fashion Week this month. Amazon has created several such specialty stores, including ones for wedding items and gift cards. These stores are the online versions of shop-in-shops at offline retailers.
For e-commerce companies like Amazon, which offer everything from books, electronics, furniture and apparel, such stores allow them to lure customers who may otherwise go to specialty online retailers.
Amazon’s rival, Flipkart Ltd, too, is creating specialty online stores for its shoppers by bundling products meant for weddings, travel, kids and sports activities. Flipkart’s unit, Myntra, has also created separate stores for brands like Nike and Adidas.
“We think this (having specialty stores) is becoming an important part of our fashion business,” said Mayank Shivam, fashion category leader at Amazon India. “It allows us to build depth in a category and present it in the most attractive way to customers. With such stores, we can offer content and the kind of comprehensive experience that customers want.”
Fashion sales bring in the fattest margins for online retailers among the top product categories. Apart from peers such as Flipkart and Snapdeal, Amazon competes with specialty fashion online retailers such as Myntra, Jabong and Limeroad.
Indians bought fashion products worth $559 million online in 2013. This may increase to $2.8 billion by 2016, according to an April 2014 report by venture capital firm Accel Partners, an investor in Flipkart.
No comments:
Post a Comment