Myntra brings offline fashion stores to customers amid Covid-19 pandemic

The Walmart-owned company has built an omnichannel network where it has partnered with several brands to have their products delivered directly from their offline-stores

Walmart-owned fashion retailer Myntra has come up with a new strategy to help brands and offline stores to reach the customers. This would enable them to scale up their businesses impacted by the Covid-19 pandemic. The company has built an omnichannel network where it has partnered with several brands to have their products delivered directly from their offline-stores, nearest to the customer’s residence. The aim is also to get the items delivered the same day or the next. 

“Even before Covid-19 we had been working on how to bring offline and online (retail) together and to augment the experiences that one will get in a store. We could actually expose an inventory of a store in Kolkata to somebody in Chennai,” said Myntra CEO Amar Nagaram, in an interview. “So all of these investments happened and then Covid-19 hit us. We went back to the whiteboard to figure out how we can help our brand partners. We helped them with all the data insights about what consumers are thinking and new normalcy. We also realized that offline stores are suffering because of the lockdown and safety apprehensions. So we wanted to actually take this investment (omnichannel network) to reality even much faster than we initially thought,”he said. 

Nagaram said now hundreds of high street and mall stores involved have been successful in delivering thousands of items to the customers. Myntra plans to launch over 150 brands from more than 3000 high street and mall stores in the next 6 months. It estimates 20-30 per cent sales for brand stores will come from this channel in the next 6-12 months.

The firm has partnered with large fashion groups such as Arvind and Aditya Birla Fashion Retail for the omnichannel network. The other top brands include Fossil, Anita Dongre, Mango, Charles and Keith, Globus, Iconic and Red Tape. The number of stores are based upon the store coverage of each brand in malls and high streets and varies between 20 stores to over 200 stores for each brand.

With omnichannel, Myntra gives each store the access to nationwide demand for their selection and unified view of the inventory. Basis the geolocation of the customer and the store, it takes anywhere between 1- 3 days to deliver the product. 

For stores and customers located within the same city, hyper-local and next day deliveries can be used. Presently customers are not aware of the location from where their products are getting shipped. However, in future customers will be more informed of the name of the stores. 

“This is the new future of retailing that we are looking at and at Myntra we are expected to lead the way,” said Nagaram. “Myntra technology is actually at the forefront of it and making it happen.”

Myntra said its platform is optimized to seamlessly onboard hundreds of brands or stores. The platform also does mapping for store serviceability, availability of selected products at the store and proximity to delivery points. Every order is processed in real-time through a decision engine to identify the most suitable store for the customers. This includes speed, quality and availability, also resulting in better load balances through most efficient paths. Thus every store turns into a mini fulfilment centre. This enables customers to get the product delivered from any store or warehouse distributed across the country. Myntra has also set up a  ‘hyper care team’ that works closely with every store for remote assistance through a central store monitoring system.

Myntra said there is a market for both premium and affordable brands. However, the preferences of Indian consumers are evolving rapidly. Fast adoption of fashion trends and willingness to spend has increased thus making people aspire for premium brands, particularly in Tier-2 and Tier-3 cities.

The company successfully integrated its omnichannel network during its recently held End of Reason Sale (EORS). This resulted in enhanced shopper experience and higher sales volumes at offline retail stores of partner brands. During EORS, between 20 and 40 per cent of orders were fulfilled via store network for the brands integrated through this system. 

Brands which were onboarded via omnichannel integrations saw up to 6X growth in sales during EORS compared to business as usual (BAU) sales. About 60 per cent of the orders fulfilled via Omni, were local and regional. Myntra witnessed 3X growth in Omni selection from stores. 

“Most of the stores made up for all the losses that they had to incur in the last 2-3 months of the shutdown,” said Nagaram.

According to experts,  fashion is a $100 billion market in the country with only 6 per cent having been penetrated by the online retail players including Flipkart and Amazon.