We Plan to Grow From Three Own-Stores to 25 Stores Over Next 12 Months: Shivani Poddar and Tanvi Malik

How do you see the market of online fashion is growing in India? According to you, how this market will grow over next two years?

The Indian retail industry has witnessed robust growth after the advent of e-commerce and its impact on the fashion industry is very significant. Among the several changes that the industry has witnessed in recent years the fact that businesses are embracing technology and innovation at a pace previously unfamiliar is a testament to the country's evolving retail market. India's online fashion commerce market is expected to grow four-fold to $30 billion by 2020.  Currently, online fashion portals account for four to five percent of the total fashion market, comparable to sales from department stores put together.
Around a quarter of apparel, shoppers go online for shopping. As consumers gain more confidence in online shopping, this will rise.

How would you sum up the FabAlley’s journey so far? Being started as pure online entity what was the rationale behind going to offline retail?

FabAlley is an online led fast-fashion brand for women. We can also call it a 360 degrees wardrobe solution for western and fusion wear. We started in 2012 and have completed 5 years recently. We started because we saw a gap in fashion for women who were living in metro cities with a tight monthly budget, and yet wanted to be fashionable, wanted to dress up as per the global trends and we saw a serious lag at that point in time for this kind of audience.

The idea for FabAlley is to be an omnipresent, pan-channel brand. And we feel that the full impact of a brand is felt when there is a certain touch and feel factor attached to it. Also, now FabAlley is at a stage where we want it to be in the same neighbourhood as its fellow fast fashion brands like H&M and Forever 21. And therefore, we want to expand our offline presence.

 Kindly shed light on your current distribution? Going forward, the focus will be on online expansion or offline? Are you also looking to open franchised stores?

• FabAlley has rapidly expanded to 60shop in shops with Central across 25 cities
• Successfully launched 5 exclusive stores for Indyain Delhi, Bangalore and Chennai
• Not currently looking to open franchised stores, we will consider it after we open 20-25 outlets.

Going forward, what are the plans for category expansion?Kindly shed light on your best performing category?

We plan to use the fresh capital infusion to expand geographically into the top metros and affluent Tier-1 cities. We plan to grow from 3 own-stores to 25 stores in the next 12 months and will be deploying 10-12 Crores towards the expansion. The aim is to grow our Indya brand both offline and online, while the FabAlley brand with its rapid fashion, global fashion strategy grows primarily online through horizontal and vertical category additions in the western wear apparel and accessories space. Our best performing ranges include FabAlley – Tops & Dresses and Indya – Tunics, Silk Crop Tops & Maxi Skirts.

Kindly throw light on your TGand best-selling price points?

Our best-selling price points typically fall between Rs 1500-2000.

Who do you see as your competition within the same space?

For FabAlley, our competitors are Vero Moda, H&M, Forever 21 in the offline space and Koovs in the online space. Indya competes with the likes of Global Desi, W & Biba.

How did you get design inspirations?Also, shed light on your manufacturing facility?

We have a large in-house design team that takes inspirations from the leading international and Indian runways, street style and own-site data insights.

We get our designs manufactured locally in Delhi NCR, where a large number of medium and large scale manufacturers are based. Our vendor network is fairly extensive, with quick lead times allowing us to churn out new styles at a rapid pace.

At last, kindly highlight your growth plans?

FabAlley is on track to clock Rs.80 Crore in Gross Merchandise Value in FY18, exhibiting a 100% growth over the previous Financial Year. The company has turned EBITDA positive in the last 3 quarters in FY18 and is expected to sustain an EBITDA positive rate of over 5% in the next 12 months as it continues to grow.

Also, after 5 stores for our Indyabrand, we are now planning on expanding our offline presence by opening 25 stores in next 12 months.