E-commerce major Amazon India is training its focus on the fashion segment. According to Mayank Shivam, Category Leader, Amazon Fashion, this will see higher investments that would go into setting up niche and category-specific stores, expanding existing ones like the online designer wear segment, technology upgrades, and aiding customer discovery of items.

Recently in Kolkata, Shivam spoke on the company’s strategy in the fashion segment, the proposed investments, customer behaviour and on taking on competition.

How big is fashion as a category for Amazon India?

Amazon Fashion started two years back and in these years we have seen great momentum. Today we have over 5,000 brands, with over 500,000 styles on our platform.

Fashion is amongst the top three categories for Amazon in India. (The other two being electronics and media.) During the recent Diwali sales, we saw a seven times jump compared to last year’s sales.

That’s the momentum we are seeing here. On a year-on-year basis we have grown close to 800 per cent (2014 to 2015).

Overall our vision is to change the way India buys and sells fashion.

How are you planning to bring about this change?

There are some key areas where we are investing. One is ensuring that our customers have the best selection — that includes expanding our designer wear store, which was launched six months back.

We also have a crafted-in-India store that showcases the crafts of India from different regions.

We have 3,500 products from 11 different regions and bring them to customers across India — like Rajasthani bandini dupatta or Kolhapuri chappals.

Then there is the international shoe store that has nine Amazon-only brands, which have been brought here for the first time. So we are not just working towards the base, but also towards having niche selections.

The second is aiding customer discovery.

Customers also consume fashion content, such as buying trends. So we are also investing in a large editorial team (to develop the content).

The third is technology. Some customers may want to buy a specific offering, and we need to get the right search options for them.

Others may behave like they are at a mall — walk around, browse and buy. For that we have the brand stores and category selections such as t-shirt store.

The fourth is infrastructure such as packaging and logistics.

Within fashion what are the fast moving items?

Mostly, apparels and shoes. And within these there are further categories.

How is your traffic divided?

More than 50 per cent of our sales are through mobiles. And we also see more than 50 per cent of our traffic (which may not always be sales) coming in from tier-2 cities. Even in the case of niche stores, we see nearly half the traffic coming from tier-2 cities.

Are you exploring the possibility of going app only?

We let our customers choose. We would want to be present wherever — on all platforms and devices — our customers are.

We clearly see a great momentum in the market on mobiles and that’s why a lot of stores are created with the ‘mobile first’ philosophy and then extended to the desktop.

You are neither a deep discounting site nor a specific-to-fashion e-tailer. How do you see competition from these players?

We work from a customer backwards (approach). And if we are able to provide what the customer values, they will trust us and come back.

The market is large enough in India to have multiple players and formats. We have seen the same globally, and India is no different.

In terms of discounts, let me say we follow a market-place model. So we let the sellers take a call on discounting. And Indian customers are fairly evolved. They look for overall value and trust with the brand.

Going forward how would the portfolio be skewed towards — premium, mid range or mass market?

We want to cater to everybody. First we want to bring the customer on board with the selections. So we will never make any skews towards any category. We will play across all categories.

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