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Bestylish.com, the footwear e-Commerce venture from the Smile Interactive Technology Group (SITG), will start selling bags in around a month. The portal was launched in May 2011, and is now also exploring private labels starting with Joos, an in-house footwear brand for women priced at below Rs 1,000.
Speaking to Business Line , Mr Shailen Amin, CEO, Bestylish.com, said, “We decided upfront that we will be category killers in whatever we launch, and so are careful about what we enter. Bags are a good category to enter as we are already in shoes. Sourcing synergies are there and we have existing relationships that we can build upon.”
On private labels, he added, “Private labels are being explored by most e-Commerce sites; the margins are higher much like in offline retailing. In our case, we started with Joos for women because there is an opportunity to create a national women's footwear brand. With traffic of a million people a week, why not develop our own brands?”
The site is selling 1,000 pairs of shoes a day, with an average value of Rs 1,350 a transaction, according to its CEO. This number has grown from 100 transactions at Rs 1,000 a transaction in June last year. It claims to have retained 60 per cent of its customer base, with each retained customer accounting for four transactions a year (projected).
COD drops, online grows
In tune with several other e-Commerce players, towns beyond the top eight metros contribute half the sales on Bestylish.com. The share of Cash-on-delivery (COD) orders has dropped to around 32 per cent, from a high of 60 to 70 per cent shortly after the launch. Of the COD orders, the ‘returned undelivered' constitute 30 per cent.
Mr Amin explained, “It has to do with trust in the site and with online transactions. People are increasingly using net banking and credit cards.”
On Cash-before-delivery (CBD), which the site has not yet started (but some e-Commerce players have), he said, “We tend to be very protective of our customers. We would rather wait and see how others do it.”
Offline kiosks
Bestylish is also present through 450 kiosks in physical stores selling apparel and footwear. For the store owners, it serves as an ‘extension of their inventory'.
The kiosks have found more favour in smaller towns that lack multiple large format footwear showrooms, and contribute 10 to 15 per cent of the business, said Mr Amin.
Ten per cent of sales on Bestylish.com are from kids' shoes. Men's shoes contribute over half the total sales. The biggest opportunity lies in women's shoes, according to Amin. With bags set to retail in 30 to 40 days, the share of products for women is bound to increase.
Bestylish had received a funding of $8.5 million from early stage investor Mangrove Capital, which had also invested in SITG's shopping club Fashionandyou.com and group buying portal DealsandYou.com. Most recently, the Group launched a site dedicated to its own brands of apparels and accessories, freecultr.com.
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