How this Women's Shoe Brand has Clocked 160 pc Growth Over Last Year by Building a Strong Online Community ?

The pandemic has pushed every brand to reconsider its business strategies to figure out what will work and what won’t. Despite the uncertainty and rising challenges, some brands have continued to hold their presence among their consumers and grow further. 

One such brand is Mumbai-based women’s shoe brand The CAI Store which has clocked 160 percent growth over last year. The D2C brand has made this possible without much reliance on e-commerce marketplaces – the brand clocks about 80 percent of its revenue through its own website. The company relies on its unique community-building model and influencer-based strategies to retain the growth of the brand. 

“We took a slightly different route to build our brand,” says Dhanraj Minawala, Co-Founder, The CAI Store.

“Typically, every brand wants to take the route of selling through Amazon, Nykaa, and other marketplaces whereas we took the route where we wanted to a build our own brand that offered products to achieve sales at reasonable rates,” he added.

In fact, back in 2018, the company decided to get delisted temporarily from all marketplaces.

The company was founded in 2015 (operationally since 2016) by husband-wife duo Aradhana Minawala and Dhanraj Minawala with an aim to solve a simple gap that they observed in the shoe-wear market. They realized back then that there was no Indian footwear brand that gives the 'trendy international vibe'. 

“If you want to buy a shoe that is stylish and trending, you have to take it from international brands like Zara, H&M, etc. There was no Indian brand providing that kind of quality and aesthetics in the products. All Indian brands focused on mass footwear products. That’s ideally where the idea of The CAI Store was born,” Dhanraj further added.

The brand also understands that much of the younger generation growing in India want to live an aspirational life and they look up to their favorite influencers for their fashion choices. So, the brand focuses on building products, which they bring out on a regular basis, that have uber designs and are available at reasonable rates, which is arguably what the millennials look for.  

In fact, the price range of the products starts from Rs 999. 

Also, the company claims to offer products that are sustainable and non-leather footwear. “That’s the game-changer. There is no leather involved. As a consumer you know you are doing something right,” Dhanraj said. 

Marketing Strategy

As stated, the brand is big on influencer-based marketing, given the niche target audience. The CAI Store has collaborated with personalities like Rhea Kapoor, Aashna Shroff, Masoom Minawala, etc. The company is also big on collaborations, bringing fresh new perspectives on designs and providing them to their consumer base. 

Dhanraj shared, “We have multiple collaborations throughout the year. Retention is a big role in what we are trying to do. We focus on multiple influencers and multiple collaborations. And, as we tie-up with a designer and when they come on board we get a fresh perspective towards our shoes.”

“We are very consumer-focused when it comes to any type of strategies for marketing. We would like to try and give a product that they would not expect and also at a reasonable price point,” Dhanraj further stated. 

Also, equally importantly, the brand relies on solid community building particularly through their social media (270,000 followers on Instagram) where they are regularly in touch with their consumers. 

Challenges in Building the Brand

As with other brands, The CAI Store also faced the impact of the pandemic but the sales picked up given the brand’s strong presence in the online sphere, benefitted by the massive online adoption among the Indian population.  

Dhanraj shared, “A part of running a startup is every six months the set of challenges one deals with is totally different. Today as we are growing, one of our larger challenges is based on supply and to grow at a larger scale. The manpower is the current challenge.”

The company, which currently has a retail outlet in its office, wants to grow its retail presence and work on an omnichannel strategy going forward as the pandemic dies down. 

“As the Covid is going to settle down, we are going explore the retail but our key focus will always be online. Retail will be built in a module to help our push the online business,” Dhanraj added. 

Further, on how specifically the pandemic impacted the brand, Dhanraj stated: “Definitely the pandemic did impact us. Our retail 'model exhibitions' and 'pop-us' were a big part of revenue and that has completely gone away. It did change the plans for us. The growth of online has a lot to do with the pandemic. People who buy online has grown multi-fold in the last two years.”

Future Plans

Riding on the growth, the company is planning to have a big collection in the first week of February. In fact, the company offers something new every quarter.

The founders believe that going forward through the third wave if the consumer demand remains at where it is now, everything else will fall into place. 

Moreover, though currently, their consumer base is chiefly Tier-I cities, the company believes they have a lot to offer to Tier-II and III cities given India has a large young population who have access to social media. Henceforth, they will be working to cater to non-metro cities going forward. 

Economically, the company plans to clock Rs 15 crore by the end of this financial year.