Amazon India’s Great Indian Festival Sale has kicked off from October 10 and will go till October 15. The brand has been betting big on the fashion category.
Elaborating on what is new this season, Arun Sirdeshmukh, Business Heat at Amazon Fashion told Indiaretailing, “We have worked very hard on the basic elements that make you want to shop at one destination v/s others. Amazon has partnered with over 21,000 brands across 10 lakh styles and is offering a total inventory of nearly 40 million units to shop from. The brand has launched nearly 3,000 more brands since Diwali last year. It has grown close to 2x for this Diwali as compared to previous year.”
Following the commercial partnership with Shopper’s Stop Limited (SSL), Amazon Fashion’s on-boarded 140 plus brands with a selection of over 25,000 offering apparel, shoes, handbags, watches, beauty, office products and other categories. This includes brands such as Rheson, Kashish, Haute Curry etc.
“Amazon Fashion has scaled up its celebrity brand portfolio with exciting brands launched exclusively with us such as Just F (Jacqueline Fernandes), Prowl (Tiger Shroff), D:FY (Hardik Pandya), Rheson (Sonam Kapoor) as well as exclusive partnerships with brands like New Balance, Under Armor for the festive season,” revealed Sirdeshmukh.
Amazon Fashion’s private brands such as Symbol offering over 3,000 styles, MYX (over 500 styles), Arthur Harvey (close to 100 styles) and House & Shields (over 100 styles) offer shoppers great quality at affordable prices. The selection has grown close to 75 percent YoY in 2018. The festive season, these brands are offering a selection of over 7,500 styles to choose from.
Focus
“This year we are focussing on a couple of segments. Our Indian wear store is even more exciting this year. The ethnic wear store offers a selection of 2 lakh styles from over 3,000 brands which includes brands like Manyawar, BIBA, Rangriti and W for woman at affordable points. The store offers nearly 4 times more selection than any other online ethnicwear store,” stated Sirdeshmukh.
He added, “We are equally focusing on handloom and handicraft stores. With over 1,500 weavers and craftsmen along with state co-operatives across India, authentically sourced, Amazon now features 5,000+ styles on the Handicraft and Handloom Store on Amazon Fashion.”
Another pne is designer wear. Amazon has added more than 100 designer boutiques on Amazon Fashion along with this they are also promoting lot of young designers.
The jewelry section has really come alive this season and the brand is also focussing equally to expand the category further. Amazon Fashion is offering the largest precious jewelry selection across India with over 4 lakh styles in jewelry from 100+ precious jewelry brands like Joyalukkas, PC Jeweller, Malabar, Senco, Mia by Tanishq, Candere by Kalyan. Jewelry brands like Stylori, Orra are exclusively available on Amazon Fashion.
“Amazon is also offering the largest gold coin selection with almost 1,000+ designs from top 30 brands across India,” revealed Sirdeshmukh.
Growth Story
This festive season Amazon has seen 100 percent growth in sales over the last year. Brands like American Tourister, UCB, Puma, Biba, Shoppers Stop, Casio, Fastrack have seen sales growth of 10-15x over an average business day.
Whereas, Amazon’s own brands in the fashion category have obsereved 400 percent growth in sales over last year.
According to Sirdeshmukh, “The shoes category has seen 150 percent plus growth in sales over last year. Specifically, women shoppers on Amazon Fashion loved their shoes shopping with 350 percent growth in sales over last year.
Apparel is largest category on Amazon Fashion with more than double the sale of Great Indian festival last year.
“Luggage and travel gear have seen growth of 130 percent in sales over last year. Customers took to festive shopping with jewelry doing 3x of sales compared to last year,” he added.
Share of fashion customers of total Amazon customers has also increased. One out of every three new to Amazon customers comes through fashion, he further added.
“Every four out of five new customers that we are acquiring are coming from Tier II and beyond,” asserted Sirdeshmukh.
As far as overall fashion category is concerned, the brand is looking to grow at 2.5-3x as compared to last year.
On Competition
When asked about the conflicting claims made by Amazon and Flipkart about grabbing the biggest pie of the fashion segment this festive season, Sirdeshmukh said, “Just check the review with our sellers and ask customers from where they are buying, the answer will be crystal clear that it is Amazon. We do not have a habit of putting other brands down. We want to stick with what we are known for.”
He added, ” In terms of traffic, we have always had the maximum traffic, this time the search is unprecedented. One of three people are coming at looking at the fashion products and our job is to convert them. All our growth rates are indicative of who is ahead of whom. We are very clear that we are the preferred destination for fashion.”
Winning Trust of Brands
There are many brands that have exclusively launched with Amazon. For example: Under Armor which forayed into India has two-year long association with Amazon.
Explaining what attracts the brand to exclusively participate with Amazon, Sirdeshmukh stated, “There are brands that are willing to come to India but have no clue about the Indian market. And these brands want to grow with someone whom they trust. Secondly, we also promote the brands in whom we see the potential. The brands that we have promoted are Just F, Prowl and New Balance to name a few.”
