Craftsvilla, an online retailer of ethnic brands, which is slowly shifting its strategy to be an omni-channel player, is looking to open about 1,000 outlets at an investment of ₹100 crore next year.

The expansion will be through a combination company-owned stores and shop-in-shops in large format stores and smaller multi-brand outlets.

At present, Craftsvilla has 62 outlets, which will cross 75 by the end of current year in cities such as Mumbai, Pune, Hyderabad, Kolkata, Kolhapur, Cochin, Coimbatore, Delhi, Varanasi and Chandigarh. It opened its 50th offline store in Chennai today.

“We are aggressively moving in both online and offline channels with a lean capex and operating model. Our customers like our products as we churn out designs very fast and distribute them quickly to our online and offline stores. Using unique models, we plan to disrupt ethnic retail in India,” Manoj Gupta, CEO of Craftsvilla, told BusinessLine.

Private labels

The Mumbai-based company, which started off in 2011 as a marketplace to sell ethnic products, has in the past year revamped its offerings to become an ethnic lifestyle brand with focus on women’s fashion. With in-house design and manufacturing units, the brand has been able to expand its private labels range both in the online and offline channels.

Craftsvilla started its private labels in the middle of 2016 and launched about three private brands — Avanya, Jharokha and Anusura — in the affordable ethnic and handloom segment.

However, later, the company rationalised all its brands and discontinued them to focus on brand ‘Craftsvilla’.

“We currently have only the Craftsvilla brand with Jharonka as a sub-brand targeting the handloom segment,” Gupta said adding that the private labels helped to improve the company’s margins.

At 20-30 per cent month-on-month growth, the traction in private brands has been encouraging. ,

This growth is primarily driven by non-metros as the consumers there have less or no access to big retailers in the traditional and ethnic segment.

Craftsvilla Handicrafts Pvt Ltd, the holding company of Crafstvilla.com, posted a revenue of ₹31 crore with a loss of ₹27 crore for the fiscal 2018, which is about one-third of the ₹86 crore loss it reported in 2017. The revenues for the previous fiscal was at ₹29 crore, according to data sourced from the Registrar of Companies.

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