Targeting international brands
Targeting international brands

Lingerie shopping, that too online, is still a matter of scepticism for Indian women. Zivame, one of India’s first lingerie online store, is all set to change this scenario as it plans to bring in more brands for consumers to look into and enable them to shop online for lingerie. Richa Kar, CEO, Zivame shares her plan of action from here on.

Gunjan Piplani (GP): Kindly give us a brief about Zivame, its offering and brands. 

Richa Kar (RK): Zivame, India’s premier online lingerie store, features over 1000 lingerie styles to choose from: bridal lingerie, plus size lingerie, every day wear, shapewear, lounge wear, nightwear and swimwear for women. The collection is curated and hand-picked from the top national and international brands like Hanes, WonderBra, Triumph, Ultimo, Lovable, Plié, Jockey, Amanté, Penny, Bw!tch, Enamor, Hollywood Fashion Secrets and many others. 

GP: Lingerie is a very private product and a product wherein a consumer would want to touch, feel and try the product, how do you get this to your buyers through a virtual portal?

RK: Zivame replicates the offline shopping experience for lingerie by offering detailed product pages with in-depth descriptions and images, allowing users to understand the look and feel of a piece of lingerie. With the use of detailed illustrations and images, customers are provided with all the necessary details to make a purchase decision. There is still a lot of social discomfort with women shopping for lingerie in offline stores. And we believe that enabling women to shop online from the comfort and privacy of their homes, Zivame has really helped the Indian woman explore and fulfil their varied lingerie needs.

GP: How do you ensure to maintain the aesthetics of your website?

RK: We follow very strict quality guidelines for all collateral and product images on the website. Each brand we retail also have their own brand guidelines, which we adhere to at every level. We put in a lot of effort to ensure that imagery on the site is appealing, aesthetic, does not offend general sensibilities at the same time provides detailed view of the product to the customer. All this is supported with relevant and quality content.

GP: What kind of feedback, positive and negative if any, do you get for your website in terms of products, the website and others? What changes have you made to you website keeping the same in mind.

RK: As a company, we are always striving to improve our services and product offering to customers. Our customers often write to us asking us to add specific products or categories which they cannot find anywhere. Depending on the demand for such specialised products, we try to make them available on Zivame.com. One such requirement was for a post-operative bra. This bra is ideal for post breast-surgery procedures, including mastectomy. The product is now available only with us through our tie up with Plié, which is a South American brand exclusively retailed on Zivame.com.

GP: What are plans regarding the portal in terms of products and brands? Do we see any new additions?

RK: The plan is to keep bringing more to the table. Our customers expect that from us. We have a lot of international brands coming on board; we’re also increasing representation of existing categories such as swimwear, activewear, plus size etc. We’ve recently added a Resort line from Penny. 

GP: Do you plan to offer men's innerwear as well?

RK: No, not as of now.

GP: How many visitors do you have on any given day and how many concrete members?

RK: Visitors on our site have grown from a mere 6000 in August, 2011 to cumulative 8 million in one year.

GP: What is the average ticket size and which is the best-selling brands across categories?

RK: Average transaction value is upwards of Rs.1200. Lingerie being our core, our best-selling brands are the ones that have a wider range in the category, some of these brands are Jockey, Enamor, Triumph, Lovable and Hanes. For specialized products such as shapewear, accessories, activewear and resortwear brands such as Plié, Ultimo, Decathlon, Zivame, and Penny do well.

GP: What are your expansion plans? What is the growth rate?

RK: We are growing at 50 per cent month on month.

 

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