Walmart owned Flipkart has scaled up its large appliances and furniture brand offerings ahead of the festival season sale — Big Billion Days.
The announcement comes days after the rival Amazon expanded its furniture portfolio in tier 1 and 2 cities during the launch of its Grand Festival season sale and added nearly 60,000 products to its furniture and furnishings segment.
E-commerce giants Amazon and Flipkart are tapping into the home and lifestyle segments in their upcoming sale period from September 28 to October 4 after witnessing a huge demand from tier 3 cities.
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MarQ, Flipkart’s large appliances brand, would now be offering high-tech home and personal audio devices and an Android TV streaming box apart from washing machines and refrigerators. Amid huge demand in the after sales-care, Flipkart said it has also expanded its service pincodes this year to many areas and strengthened its pan-India team of over 4,000 technicians.
MarQ brand has grown by two times over the past year and 40 per cent of its business has come from tier 3 cities whereas 35 per cent of the profits were drawn from metros.
The e-commerce firm currently has 41 per cent of the online furniture market share. The market worth $300 million has been growing at a CAGR of 80-85 per cent dominated by metro cities and tier 1 and 2 markets, according to Redseer, a research marketing firm.
The e-tailer’s Perfect Homes brand in the furniture category has added products such as bookshelves and kitchen cabinets along with beds, sofas, dining tables etc.
The brand has also forayed into home furnishings and home decor, with a play in categories like wall clocks, lamps, bed sheets and bath linen. Flipkart’s furniture brand grew two times last year during the sale period with cities such as Patna, Lucknow, Coimbatore, Guwahati, Mangalore, and Bhubaneswar being its key markets.
“The focus of our private brands is always customers from designing products all the way through to after-sales care,” said Adarsh Menon, VP, private brands, Flipkart.