 "Trendin.com to leverage physical outlets for e-commerce growth")
"We are slowly trying to leverage brand power and store network. We are working on a model to leverage store presence," said Shivanandan Pare, head - e-commerce and chief digital officer, Madura Fashion and Lifestyle.
The company is expecting the move to happen in phases and an overall integration in leveraging the retail store presence across the country, to be felt by the consumer, is expected to be around 24-36 months from now.
The advantages include reduction of delivery time.
"If we leverage all our stores, roughly 40-50 per cent of our orders should get fulfilled within 24 hours. We have to see whether the cost will come down," he said. At present, almost 95 per cent of the orders gets delivered to end consumers between 72-96 hours. 30-40 of orders get delivered within 24-48 hours of placing order.
He added that the time for delivery across the e-commerce industry vary depending on the PIN Code of delivery. However, the company would look at whether this norm will change for the website once it leverages all the physical stores.
While the model of delivering the product from a single warehouse is proven, how the operations would be managed once the delivery take place from 1,700 stores is one of the challenges, he said. When this is implemented, one store might get only one order in 10 days, but it has to act quickly once there is an order in place. This challenge could be common for any retail organisation which is trying to leverage their retail stores for e-commerce and the company would look at tackling this, he added.
The e-commerce business, including Trendin and business through other e-commerce sites, for Madura Fashion and Lifestyle was around one per cent of the company's overall revenue in the first year of e-commerce operations, out of which almost 33 per cent was from Trendin.com. In the second year, which is the last fiscal year, the e-commerce business was two per cent of the overall revenue of Madura Fashion and Lifestyle and almost half of that came from Trendin.com. During the third year, which is the current fiscal, the company expects a similar growth, he added. While he refused to reveal actual numbers, he added that the e-commerce business is growing at 175 per cent every year.
This year June, the company launched its own mobile app and mobile as an ecosystem is contributing roughly 35 per cent plus revenue of Trendin.com, he said. Almost 50 per cent of the business for Trendin.com comes from tier II, III and IV cities. The team is of around 120 people now and 45-50 people in engineering and product development, he added.
