Trendin is not any run-of-the-mill fashion e-commerce portal but a platform which is the online custodian of an incredible fashion heritage. Forged from the belief in offering endless style options for customers, with add-on customisation options like Free Alteration, and tailor-made personalisation services like My Fit, we are looking at a potential winner. Shivanandan Pare, Head-Trendin explains what gives Trendin an edge over other existing fashion e-commerce portals.
The Journey of Trendin
The tables at the lobby-level Threesixty Degrees restaurant at The Oberois, Delhi do remind you of little, unsure, wobbly-boats floating about nowhere and purposelessly. But our interviewee—Shivanandan Pare, Head of Trendin—the online sales platform of Madura F&L (or should we say ABFRL) sounded very sure of himself. Pare, a man on a mission, shared the idea behind and not just the numeric growth of his online venture. As his forgotten lunch slowly went cold, Pare warmed up to passionately share his successful experiments as well as the ethos of what he is trying to create for Madura F&L.
What is Trendin?
Shivanandan Pare (SP): Trendin was launched on 18th March 2013. It is the full function apparel shopping site of Madura F&L group. Trendin is built on the very ethos of internet. We have all the functions of e-commerce. In fact, Trendin has its own engineering team that manages the website. Every product displayed at Trendin is from Madura and we maintain the stocks on our own. But on the P&L side the sales are accounted within the individual brands accounting.
Showcasing and selling the giant, independent, brick and mortar retail brands like Pantaloon, Peter England, People, Allen Solly, Van Heusen and Louis Philippe which were perfectly capable of having their own brand shopping sites would also be a task for which certain rules were defined. How exactly are the operations structured?
SP: The autonomy and the liberty of Trendin team is independent as it has its own budget and operations. It is our choice as to what we put online from the brand portfolios. This is because with the transaction and analytics with us we are closer to the consumer. Therefore the Trendin team decides the technology, marketing and merchandising for the online business. In totality, the complete operation and fulfilment part is driven by Trendin team. While the brands have great connect in the tradition spaces, I would say, Trendin business team is the closest to the consumer on the digital space.
Why was Trendin launched? What significant benefit does it give consumers?
SP: I would say that our prime salience is that we are building endless style options for customers from all the Madura brands. For say, if there is a consumer who is looking for Madura brands and offerings from them, then Trendin is the place where he will be able to see the maximum number of options for all the brands under Madura. These will be more than anywhere else. The number of options are more than the offline stores since their biggest challenge is the shelf space. A store can carry only a limited number of options but online a brand can carry much more than that. This is the beauty of online. For example, at any one point of time a Louis Philippe store carries 80-100 options for shirts but online we carry 500-600 options. Similarly even independent of brand when one looks at categories, for example, say white shirts—at Trendin the number of white shirts available are more than 500 across the brands. So, Trendin is a destination where firstly each brand is exhibited in full glory and secondly a consumer can seamlessly shift to other brands as there are all the brands put together. Now, for check shirts Trendin has around 600-800 options. And, each of these many options are across a set of powerful brands. Such a choice is difficult to imagine anywhere else. Even if we compare this feature to any other e-commerce player like Flipkart, Jabong, etc. we will have the largest collections.
What is there in Trendin beyond the wide range of product choice?
SP: Trendin has distinct services like free alteration, a consumer can buy a trouser and get it altered free across the Madura brands. On the same lines, Van Heusen has introduced My Fit concept which fills the gap of body shape for Indian consumers. For example, if one is 5 feet 4 inches with a bigger than normal waist line and 38 shoulder size, he is forced to wear size 40 or 42 because of the paunch but lengths become an issue. My Fit from Van Heusen solves such body shape issues. A customer can customise apparel within the available options as per the body shape and size. This helps Trendin to leverage the core strength of offline business. Technically, the products are designed and adapted by the brands and Trendin connects customer and brand through the e-commerce platform. These products are made after receiving the order and deliver in within 9-10 days. This has been a very successful functionality and within six months around 25,000-30,000 people have used My Fit online.
What about the other strength of online—the ability to take a brand where it is not present? Does this stand as a significant benefit even for Madura F&L brands which have already penetrated deep into the country?
SP: Yes, indeed, Trendin is enabling the penetration for Madura brands where they are not present physically or in full scale of numbers. The consumer mix at Trendin today is split 50-50 percent between top 10 metros and tier-II and -III cities. Now these tier-II and III cities are places where the brands don’t have or don’t have enough stores and that’s a great gap which we fill in.
Which are the star cities from tier-II and -III segments that are standing out?
SP: A lot are emerging. I would like to share another aspect. In 2013, we launched a limited edition collection for women with a few thousand products. Surprisingly, even at the higher price points of a limited edition collection, several customers showed interest from cities like Raichur, Nanded, Bilaspur, Nasik, etc. Now these are typically such emerging and under rated sectors which probably were never the target audience from the brick and mortar retail perspective.
It is a global truth and a common perception in India that women’s clothing moves comparatively faster online. On the flip side Madura F&L brands are traditionally gentlemen brand. What are your comments on category-wise online traction?
SP: From last October-November, we have roughly seen that the women traffic has moved up from 25 to 30 percent. This includes everything from contribution to traffic and orders. So, between men and women the split is currently 70:30. The ratio doesn’t hold true in our offline business.
Another significant insight comes from the kids category which is roughly three-five percent of business depending on the period you are looking at. It is also not similar kind of contribution you can look in offline from kids category.
Footwear is an extremely online-friendly category. In fact, we didn’t know that crisp formal shoes from Louis Philippe and Van Heusen would see such huge transaction online. This is despite the fact that the price point is Rs. 3,999+ for shoes from Louis Philippe and Van Heusen they are still doing good.
Plus there are some kinds of category enablers that Trendin is facilitating. Traditionally, the categories may not have been so relevant in a particular mode of shopping or channel. However now with on-line it gives the organisation a larger ability to leverage their online presence by experimenting with new categories.
At Trendin what percentage of transactions happen on full price and what at discounted price?
SP: We are healthier than other e-commerce players but at the same time we are at a very small scale also so our incentivising is within the overall health concerns.
From a pure online perspective our ability to sell full price merchandise is higher than any other online player because of the significant strength of the brands and the loyalty that they have fostered over history. We believe that revenue drivers should be chased because what is good for consumers in the long run will be good for the business as well.
The Collective is a super-premium lifestyle retail chain by Madura Fashion & Lifestyle. Why aren’t the brands which available on Collective on Trendin?
SP: Collective is the international business, so individually the team is working with each brand how to bring it online. And, Collective team is taking the call in terms of what should be there online as a strategy because these international brands try building exclusivity.
Has Trendin thought of retailing any brand apart from Madura F&L brands?
SP: As of now Trendin doesn’t have any ambition of getting other brands online. Because we believe that the kind of range, market segment we have and the kind of consumer segment we cater to – there is a large headroom for Trendin to play with its current brands rather than getting other brands on board. From the apparel side every solution required for wardrobe is getting fulfilled at Trendin.
Any thoughts on a Big Trendin Day Sale?
SP: No. None at all. And let me explain this a bit further. We are not trying to create the market for online fashion retail. It is already created by Jabong, Myntra, Flipkart and other online players. I don’t have to create those big billion days. But we create couple of hours in a day, number of days in a week within Trendin wherein we try to attract them to get them on-board and snack our site.
People talk about the omni-channel experience, do you think you are moving there with Trendin to offer that experience?
SP: Omni-channel starts playing if you initiate significant and relevant presence on e-commerce, and Madura has it now through Trendin. So there is larger organisational relationship which is happening on the omni-channel but yes initials steps are being taken.
Overall it is about a great experience and initiatives like free alterations are things that enable the whole concept that wherever you may buy from you will get the service. Similarly, the customer can pay at the store and receive the product at the door step. It offers payment and delivery flexibility.
Since the launch of Trendin what percentage of overall Madura brand business has moved onto online?
SP: At Trendin we are more or less closer to 1 percent contribution to the revenue which is still significantly low but it is a good milestone to begin with. Overall online is approximately 2 percent because we are not very aggressive there. There are other exclusive factors like Louis Philippe is exclusively available on Trendin.
Through Trendin how many unique customers have connected to the Madura Fashion & Lifestyle?
SP: Today in the digital space, Trendin has higher fashion search query volume than any other apparel brand. From data base perspective in terms of reaching out that’s a very confidential number, but I can say that we are close numerically to the bases of any of the historic brands which are available on the portal.
How would you define each of the brands if you were to see them in terms of how they are moving on Trendin?
SP: What we are seeing is extensive snacking by customers of some of the brands like Pantaloon and Peter England. Pantaloon in particular perhaps as the average ticket size is lower. Repeated preference is showing that their brand loyalty is extending even on Trendin.
Having said that, there is a huge close-to-25 percent of consumers who have multiple brands in their basket, which means the basket may have merchandise from Peter England, People, Allen Solly and Louis Philippe also. Here we could perhaps read that their proprietary brand preference is being carried even online.
On the whole, it is perhaps too early to say which brand is emerging strong. When we start getting more traction in couple of years, then we will have a similar performance based mix like offline has. From value perspective, Van Heusen leads because of My Fit. In fact, Van Heusen is a more digital friendly brand and also its team is working hard to build its digital presence.
From overall brand perspective, Louis Philippe is a very strong brand but it doesn’t have women’s category like Van Heusen has. A general observation is that when average ticket size, price of a single product is smaller, the customer tends to buy more and we sell more.
Most of the large internet companies are spending substantial amount of their volume or revenue on advertising. What percentage are you spending on advertising?
SP: We are at the same level where three-four years ago Jabong and Myntra were. We are also focusing on customer acquisition. It is an investment for any internet business company.
What are the promotional ideas you are pushing Trendin with?
SP: We promote Trendin predominantly through digital search engines, Facebook and other digital marketing companies. We also use EDMs, mails and SMS as our core promotional strategy. We send newsletter to our database once in fortnight. Also, we are working on our mobile app which we plan to launch in this quarter. But our site is also very mobile browse-friendly. All developments are handled in-house. Everything you see on the site is built in-house. When we launched Trendin, we were only four-member team and today, we have 100-member team, of which 35 percent are engineers.
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