 "LimeRoad")
Brand: LimeRoad
Budget: Rs 4-5 crore
Agency: In-house
Three years after starting up, online fashion retailer LimeRoad has just launched its first television campaign. Unlike other fashion portals such as Myntra and Jabong, LimeRoad focuses on creating looks and has a unique scrapbook feature, where its users can create, share and shop for latest trending looks every day. It is a social discovery and shopping platform, exclusively for women. "Our focus is on creating looks. Our estimate is that in India about 25 million women are online in Sec A and Sec B markets. Nearly 17 per cent of these women are visiting us every month. We want more women to discover our platform. Since TV has wider reach, we decided to launch a television campaign," says Suchi Mukherjee, founder & CEO, LimeRoad.
So far LimeRoad has been advertising only on Facebook and around 80 per cent of its gross merchandise volume (GMV) comes from organic traffic. "Our community posts up to 3 million new looks a month, averaging 100,000 a day. Our users are, on average, creating 60 page views a month across platforms. This is the first time we are venturing outside our traditional Facebook zone," says Mukherjee.
Conceptualised in-house, the commercial simply shows models walking around in LimeRoad dresses. There is no acting or storytelling involved. "Basically, it is a television commercial that doesn't look like one. There's no acting involved in the TVC. We took some of the clothes from our platform, got a bunch of models, a few of whom are our friends, and asked them to have fun, proudly flaunting their LimeRoad top picks, like any other day on an average city street," says Mukherjee.
The commercial was shot on the streets of Delhi. It has a very here-and-now feel, says Mukherjee, adding, "The results are very positive."
The campaign consists of two 10-second commercials showcasing both western and ethnic collections on LimeRoad. It targets all general entertainment channels, including vernacular ones, where the target audience comprises a large number of women. The brand, however, has chosen to stay away from kids and sports channels.
While 70 per cent of its consumers use the app, the portal doesn't differentiate between mobile web and mobile app. "Mobile web is growing faster and is bigger. It plays a key role in acquiring new users. So we want to make sure consumers get a great shopping experience irrespective of the platform they choose. Smartphones today come preloaded with so many apps that if you put photographs etc , there is hardly any space left to download more apps. Apps are good for repeat consumers," says Mukherjee.
LimeRoad is a pure marketplace. It has a community of users who are trained stylists. Currently, it is getting three million unique users every month, all women and has 10,000 sellers on its platform.
The online fashion industry has a huge potential, say analysts. According to a recent Google report, the online fashion retail market is expected to touch $35 billion by 2020. Fashion retail on e-commerce portals is expected to constitute 35 per cent of the total online retail revenue generated in India by 2020. In fact, every third shopping search in India on the Google search engine is fashion related and the queries in the category are growing at 66 per cent year-on-year.
No wonder Mukherjee is betting big. "The online fashion industry is huge, typically 10 times the size of electronics, if we look at the US market. About 60 per cent of Alibaba's valuation comes from its fashion and apparel business," says Mukherjee.
For Mukherjee the biggest challenge is efficient logistics and real-time tracking of sellers and courier companies on a particular pincode.
