Bengaluru-based furniture and home decor brand, Urban Ladder started its journey as an online brand six years ago and since then there has been no looking back. Today, apart from selling from its own website, the brand is present on other e-commerce sites and also boasts of 8 retail stores spread across Bengaluru and Delhi.
In an interview with Indiaretailing, Ajit Joshi, President and COO, Urban Ladder says, “Today we cater to 75-odd cities across the country. Apart from this, one store in Delhi is under fit-out and within next few months we will entering in to new cities like Mumbai, Pune and Chennai.”
“By this fiscal end, we are expecting total 15 stores of Urban Ladder to be functional and probably 5 more stores under fitouts,” he adds.
As Urban Ladder rolls out physical stores in 6 large cities, the brand is looking forward to increase the number of cities that it will service through online model.
Since first launching the offline offering in July 2017, Urban Ladder has greatly improved its business economics and accelerated its growth. Its Omnichannel strategy has increased the average order value (AOV) by 24 percent along with lowering its customer acquisition costs (CAC) by 43 percent. The brand has also optimized other channels on its path to profitability and Omnichannel expansion.
“Around 3,000-odd families visit one Urban Ladder store in a month,” asserts Joshi.
Target Audience
The brand, that believes in winning the hearts of the consumers though a clear design differentiation and an exceptional customer experience, counts young and well-educated men and women as its target audience.
Store Formats
Urban Ladder, which houses more than 1,400 SKUs, has two store formats – one starting 4,000 sq.ft and above and the other is small format sofa lounges and is restricted to 1,000 sq.ft carpet. The biggest store of the brand is in Bengaluru and spans across 7,500 sq.ft.
“Most of our stores in Bengaluru are located at high-streets. But when it comes to Delhi, both the stores are a part of malls. Going forward, we are absolutely open to both high-street and malls,” says Joshi.
“All our stores are company-operated and going forward we will continue doing so,” he adds.
Future Plans
Going forward, the furtniture retailer is looking at raising US$ 40 million to aid the expansion plans.
“We are a technology-based company, so we do constantly look at the new technologies coming to India and pay heed to changes happening around the globe. We are currently experimenting on both AI and VR and some of these innovations have already been implemented in our physical stores,” he concludes.
