It's a healthy trend that digital influence has entered even apparel industry: Vasanth Kumar

On the close heels of launching its ecommerce site maxfashion.com, India’s leading value retail brand Max Fashion is strengthening its digital footprint with plans to launch new feature additions like click and collect and endless aisele services. As the brand readies for its new innings in the online platform, in an exclusive interview with Indian Retailer, Max Fashion Executive Director Vasanth Kumar shares why it was important for the brand to build its image online.

We are hearing about Max’s Click and Collect facility that will hit the stores soon. Tell us more.
Max Fashion was launched online in a bid to reach our customers faster and provide seamless facility. The Click and Collect facility is a step forward in this direction and it will be launched in December. Max customers can soon look at the collections online, order it and pick it up from their nearby store. They will be able to pick up the order from any store in India. Not only will this ensure faster reach, even the exchange will become easier.

Why did Max decide to venture online now?
For the past three years in India, fashion consumption has been shifting and we too have change with customer needs. Thirty percent of our customers are below 22 years, which means we have the opportunity to grow more and attract more customers. Hence, we decided to leverage from physical stores to digital stores.

What do you have to say about the tech revolution in retail landscape?
It’s a healthy trend that digital influence has entered even apparel industry. Digitization is taking place in every facet of customer needs be it booking movie show or air tickets or even food. Customers now want digitized way of life experiences. Now, with more and more online channels, customers can buy anything from anywhere and everywhere.

But what challenges do you see in this trend?
I think transforming the mindset of customers from brick and mortar to buying online will be a challenge. Also, since most of the stores are geared to work during certain hours, delivering online services 24/7 from resolving problems to meeting requirements all through the day may also come across as a challenge.

What are your expansion plans?
For now, we are focusing on click and collect facility followed by endless aisle service where a customer can go through our collections in the kiosk at Max store, reserve the product if its available even in a different store and get it home delivered. More and more customised outfits will also be added to our collection.