Founded in 2012 to celebrate unique, made in India handloom fashion and handicrafts, e-commerce retailer Jaypore has come a long way. The brand’s journey – which started as an online retailer – has reached a point where it now has two brick-and-mortar stores along with being a successful online player.
Elaborating on the journey of the brand, Puneet Chawla, Co-Founder and CEO, Jaypore told Indiaretailing Bureau, “Jaypore was started six years ago and it was conceived as a platform with a mission to bring the world closer together and connect global audiences to India’s most beautiful artisanal products. Very soon we realised that there was actually a lot of demand of artisanal products here in India too. After six months of starting, we opened to India and the rest of the world and today 70 percent of our business comes from India.”
He further added, “Early this year, we shifted from clicks-to-bricks and opened our first store in Delhi and then the second store was launched in Bengaluru. Today, we ship to 150 different cities in India and 60 countries globally.”
Last year, the brand introduced a new concept called Open House – a travelling trunk show where the brand goes from one city to the next and showcase their products and lets customers try, touch and feel products and experience in person.
“Even though it has been about six years, we still believe that it is the first phase of our journey and we have got all the building blocks in place to scale up to a big business in the years to come,” he added.
Brand USP
The business model of the brand is such that it launches 8-10 new collections every day.
“This makes Jaypore a very dynamic platform where customers like to come and check out what is new every single day and because of this our repeat purchase behaviour and our repeat visits are very high,” said Chawla.
“Our brand is totally built on loyalty. Over the last three years, we have just spent about Rs 6-7 crore on marketing overall. The brand has been performing well without spending much on marketing. We acquire customers through word of mouth. From the business point of view, this is one of the most differentiating factors,” he added.
Going Offline
Opening physical stores was always a part of the plan. By going offline the brand aims at reaching more customers, especially those who may be wary of shopping online and would want to touch and feel a product before buying. It’s also for customers who want instant gratification and would want to walk out of a store with the products in hand.
The brand opened its first store in Delhi in March 2018 and the second store was opened exactly six months later in Bengaluru. Both the stores are franchisee stores. The Delhi store is spread across 1,100 sq.ft and the one is Bengaluru spans around 2,500 sq.ft. Going forward, average size stores will be between 1,000-1,500 sq.ft.
The Bengaluru store allows customers to experience their offerings across a range of design aesthetics to suit the modern Indian lifestyle. It showcases the best of apparel, jewellery, style accessories, home decor and craft capsules from Jaypore’s private label along with hand-picked designers, artisans and craft communities from across India. In addition, the store hosts an array of premium offerings like Benarasi sarees, precious silver jewelry.
According to Chawla: “70 percent of the products in the store are our own design – Jaypore private label – as compared to 15-20 percent online. We also wanted to be ready with our private label before we ventured offline. Today, our private label contributes to almost 35 percent of our business and in the offline stores on the upwards of 50 percent of our business.”
Designed by New Delhi based Headlight Studio, the store derives inspiration from various aspects of local craft and architecture. Modular store fixtures inspired by the camping furniture of Jaisalmer and reinterpretations of the colonnades from Hamp are few of the key design elements at the store.
“Bengaluru is an emerging and promising market, so it was a natural step to open our second store here. We received a great response to our travelling pop-up last year and believe that this is the right time to provide customers with an offline experience. We want the store to be an extension of Jaypore.com, where customers can come and experience the product,” stated Chawla.
“Both the stores put together are contributing to about 10-12 percent of our overall revenue,” he added.
Tech Innovations
To enhance customer experience, Jaypore store has integrated technology with retail experience through use of tablets and digital screens across the store.
“In the Delhi store, we have a screen that helps customers discover something similar to what they are wearing. It allows us to showcase greater variety of similar patterns,” said Chawla.
The store also promises to be a place for cultural exchanges, performances and conversations, thus providing a holistic overview of our rich cultural landscape.
Future Plans
By this fiscal end, the brand, which has average ticket size of Rs 3,750 online and Rs 5,500 offline, plans to open one more store. However, it has an aggressive expansion plans going ahead.
“By the end of financial year 2020 we are planning to open 10 stores. We are looking at the top cities, metros and mini-metros. We have earmarked Rs 10 crore for the offline expansion which will be through internal accruals and by raising money,” revealed Chawla.
Offline business of the brand has turned EBTIDA positive and online is expected to be EBTIDA positive by 2020.
