Strange as it may seem, there are a host of sites selling
Indian apparel on the Web. Then again, maybe it’s not all that strange, considering
the traditional Western fondness for Indian ethnic wear and the large number of NRIs who
would no doubt like to buy traditional clothing. It’s not just sites selling ethnic
apparel or women’s wear that are up on the Net. Here’s one top-brand shirt store
that’s gone online.
Charag Din (CD) was ripe for a transition to the Web. This
high-profile Bombay brand remained a one-store operation for long, but still managed to
attract a clientele that far outreached its geographical limitations. The tactics adopted
to build up this clientele included advertising in up-market publications–including
in-flight magazines, direct mailers and word-of-mouth publicity. Thus, the store ended up
with more customers from outside, than from Mumbai. So, the store would mail catalogues
and customers could select shirts to be shipped to them, for which they paid with drafts.
align="left">It is this service that has moved online. A
limited catalogue of shirts in different price ranges is available on the Net. The designs
are changed once a month, and adequate stocks are maintained separately for them.
There’s a tie-up with Skypak to deliver the goods, and there is a shipping charge of
Rs 70 per shirt in India. For orders from abroad, courier charges vary according to
destination.
In the strict sense, this is not a full e-commerce site
yet. For example, the site insists that you make payments with demand drafts mailed to the
vendor (as in the case of printed catalogues) and enter the draft number at the site. On
the other hand, competitor ColorPlus (www.colorplusonline.com) accepts credit-card
transactions online, but insists that the goods will be delivered only to the address
available with the credit-card company.
So, how is the site doing? The online business is already
being treated as a separate unit, and has its own personnel. While maximum response to the
mailed catalogues is from southern India–Kerala, that part of the country is still
low on Internet access. It’s early days yet, but the site generates 15 multiple-item
purchases a day, from some 500 daily visitors. The average size of an order from the site
is comparable to that from the mailing exercise. Some online purchases are from Mumbai
itself.
What next? CD has already spent about four times the site
development costs on advertising the site and the URL. More spend in this area is in the
pipeline. The company also plans to have a more elaborate online catalogue, a catalogue
archive, and online credit-card transactions.