Online portal wants to leverage physical stores to drive sales

In what could be a harbinger of things in retail e-commerce space, a portal wants to sell its merchandise at retail stores to drive sales, notwithstanding that it could entail investments of a different kind.

The womenswear and accessories portal – shopnineteen.com – owned by Nineteen Apparels Pvt Ltd belonging to the Delhi-based garments and leather exporter Kansin group has firmed up plans to open another line of business opportunity, according to its CEO Narinder Mahajan.

“We went online last year (March) because offline foray was not attractive given its capital-intensive nature. But now we want to leverage shop space at retail outlets to increase visibility for our product portfolio,” he told Deccan Herald.

He added that the portal wants to increase its revenues from the current Rs 5 crore to Rs 25 crore this fiscal. The womenswear market is estimated to be about $2.6 billion and is growing at a fairly good pace. The move is apparently due to growth in retail business coming more from Tier II and III cities where Internet penetration is not high, but the demographic profile is driving sales. “Almost half our business comes from these cities,” Mahajan said.

The expansion pattern of retail stores is also another reason. According to the CEO of Bangalore-based apparel company Indus-League Clothing, Rachna Aggarwal, 70 per cent of the new stores opened are in these cities that are witnessing high growth.