Fashion says wow to www

With fashion now being the second largest category in online retail in India, making up 25% of all sales, with operating margins of 35%, as per a study by retail consultancy Technopak, portals pulled out heavy-duty ammunition in a bid to lure local designers and new talent into the retail fold.

In response, the domestic fashion fraternity, finally and cautiously, shed its Internet inhibitions and embraced single-click transactions, online promotions and virtual trial rooms. Pret collaborations with portals emerged as the best way to test the churning waters.

Stylista.com seized the first-mover advantage by launching affordable lines by Wendell Rodricks, Priyadarshini Rao, Nishka Lulla and Surendri by Yogesh Chaudhary last year, adding Masaba Gupta, Shivan & Narresh and Monica Dogra to the collective in 2014.

Soon, Jabong launched a special collection in collaboration with Rohit Bal, making the designer’s pieces accessible to everyone from Rajkot to Rai Bareilly, and followed it up by bringing the Gaurav Gupta-draped sari within enviable reach, at Rs 9,000 onwards, a piece. CEO Arun Chandra Mohan calls these apparel alliances Jabong’s “unique assets” in what has been a “phenomenal year”. “While buyers get easy access to private brands and designs at an affordable price, the designers get more effective access to a broader Indian market,” says Mohan.

To bolster its premium designer-wear roster, Snapdeal partnered with the Fashion Design Council of India and added names like Manish Arora, Ashish N Soni, Malini Ramani and Varun Bahl, among others, to its folio. But even as portals were setting their sights abroad and roping in international brands like River Island, Miss Selfridge (Jabong), Oasis, Warehouse, Lipsy, Henry Holland and Mawi Keivom (Koovs), Priya Sachdev’s TSG International launched Rock n Shop taking Halston Heritage to Haryana and Saint Laurent to Surat. Indo-American portal Exclusively.in entered the Indian e-commerce market. Its managing partners Mohini and Sunjay Guleria call 2014 a landmark year for “fashion without boundaries”.

While having access to luxury labels like Alexander McQueen, Marchesa and Jean Paul Gaultier in cities like Hyderabad and Ahmedabad is no longer a laughable proposition, what has got the fashion-conscious really enthused is the thought of snagging a Tarun Tahiliani kurta or a Manish Malhotra sari at the click of a mouse. “The Indian fashion enthusiast has evolved rapidly. There is much more awareness about trends, brands and what sets them apart. These factors have encouraged some of the country’s leading fashion designers and boutiques to go online and reach a larger target audience,” says Sunjay.

For veterans like Tahiliani, it was time to take the next step. “We all thought earlier that fashion was tactile and would not be bought online, but we were proved wrong. Given the inability of retail to expand as fast as we would like, owing to a lag in the construction of malls and retail luxury management itself being in a nascent stage, there’s a very hungry market in the tier-II and III cities of India that cannot access the very few stores designers sell from. For them, we now have an online shopping site,” says Tahiliani, who is launching an exclusive capsule collection for the e-store.

While some like Ritu Kumar, Anita Dongre, Neeru Kumar and Shivan & Narresh were quick to capitalise on online opportunities, others like Rohit Gandhi + Rahul Khanna, Payal Singhal, Gaurav Gupta, AM:PM and Surendri by Yogesh Chaudhary followed suit this year. And with Amazon India finally launching of its fashion section on December 24, competition is only set to get fierce and fabulous. Click away, we say.