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Festival season is always the best time as the market picks up pace. Demand for all types of goods goes up, clothing being a leading section among them. The trends that we are seeing this festive season are that people are demanding a diverse set of fashion clothing as per their unique tastes. The festival season is a primary driver for garment purchases at this time of the year.
After two years of Covid limitations being lifted, customer demand has increased, despite skyrocketing inflation, during the holiday season. A survey found that 83 percent of customers are eager to purchase this holiday season, with a preference for clothing and electrical appliances. The daily average GMV for the fashion industry, which includes clothing and footwear, increased four times from BAU days. The majority of the demand is also coming from Tier II and III cities, and non-metros.
Categories Picking Up This Festive Season
Clovia is building up on bralettes, sports bras, push-ups, and shapewear along with creating depth in its existing categories.
“Sarees with bralettes are a huge hit this festive season. From social media influencers to B-town celebrities, this fashion trend is gaining popularity. Talking about sarees, even saree shapewear is quite in demand for that perfect mermaid-like figure. A saree shapewear helps to define your silhouette even further and gives a much-toned silhouette,” Pankaj Vermani, Founder & CEO, Clovia stated.
As the run-up to the festive season, Campus has introduced over 300 new shoe designs out of which 100 have already been launched, and the remaining would be launched by end of the year 2022. It has also launched the “Autumn-Winter” collection, which caters to a wide variety of customers, and is being introduced across retailers.
In addition to this, Campus has launched its festive range of sneakers. The range offers edgy and vibrant shoes with a color range inspired by global designs at the ease of affordability and accessibility on Indian streets, highlighting the attitude of supremacy and class capturing the overall vibe of the range. The range is available in an array of Vibrant, Pristine, Bright, and Chic mood of shades.
“This year during festivities, we have noticed that sneakers as a category are seeing tailwinds, an encouraging uptick is seen across vibrant colorways and the ladies category,” Prerna Aggarwal, CMO, Campus said.
Meanwhile, Madame says that the category which has seen a huge upward trend in terms of demand is dresses for women. At the same time, the tops and denims are also picking up as the winter season approaches.
“Overall, there is a strong demand for fashionable winter wear as we can already see many parts of the country witnessing mildly cold weather and rains,” Akhil Jain, Executive Director, Madame asserted.
Liberty has come up with its new athleisure range as it connects with young consumers, and strengthens the brand’s online and offline presence.
“The foremost trend is that consumers are likely to spend more on comfort wear rather than party wear as comfort is the new key this season. We have been witnessing customers demanding more for the athleisure segment these days. Gone are the days when athleisure was considered to be for gym and running. It is the time to slip into something comfortable,” Anupam Bansal, Director – Retail, Liberty Shoes added.
Technological Integrations to Woo More Consumers
Today, brands are focusing on embedding technologies in their operations to gain more consumer traction. For instance, Clovia recently launched Whatsapp as a service provider for customers to trigger purchase, offer, and service updates on Whatsapp. The BOT understands customer requirements from their messages and identifies sales or service processes. The BOT engaged 200,000 Customers in the first 30 days of the launch. The BOT also drives the sales process by understanding what customer is looking for and making product suggestions.
In addition to this, the brand’s platform also offers user-friendly tools like Clovia curve fit test that has helped almost 600k women so far to understand the right size for them. It is a quick algorithm that asks 5 common/visual questions to understand customers’ comfortability fit and accordingly recommend the best fit and size to the customer. Clovia also has an AI chatbot, named a ‘Bra-Bot’. It handles a host of issues like helping users to make a purchase, updating order and delivery status, or guiding to policies, FAQs, or sizing suggestions.
Similarly, Liberty Shoes’s investment in technologies like IE3 has simulated a smooth function of inventory control at the factory level as well as the point of sale saving huge costs and also adding efficiency in delivering fresh arrivals to the consumer. The new technologies introduced and the state-of-the-art machinery added have helped it to introduce innovative products in the market.
Tier II & III Markets Become Growth Drivers
The brands believe that today their biggest growth markets are Tier II and III cities as the aspirations of the customers in these cities are no different from those in the larger cities.
In the last 12 months alone, Madame has opened 20+ stores in Tier II cities.
“This expansion to Tier II and III cities is being done keeping in mind the aspirations of the young Indians living in these places. This is helping in democratizing fashion and is one of the biggest drivers of our growth,” Jain said.
“About this year’s sales, we are expecting a 30 to 35 percent increase as we have worked hard on expanding to Tier II cities in the last year,” he further added.
READ MORE: How D2C Brands are Planning to Drive Sales This Festive Season
E-Commerce Sales Boom
As consumer buying channels changed, Campus launched its D2C website in 2019 and online then made up about 5-10 percent of its sales. As the pandemic hit in 2020, the brand started building its presence online via its website and through partnerships with top e-commerce giants like Flipkart, Amazon, Mynta, and Ajio. Post-pandemic, casualization, and sneakerization have been dominant trends and its sports & athleisure offerings fit right into them.
“In 2022, 30-35 percent of our sales revenue comes from online means and we are expecting it to grow to 50 percent in the next 2-3 years,” Aggarwal asserted.
Liberty, too, is targeting to achieve the Rs 100 crore milestone of online sales in this financial year with a 16 percent contribution in total domestic sales of the company as against 4 percent only at pre-covid period.
“We have presented a very healthy Q1 2022-23 in terms of sales growth of 30 percent (Q-o-Q). The Q1 Profit before tax was the highest and has beaten the best quarter of the pre-Covid period,” Bansal concluded.
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