Going digital for better sales
With the attention diverting from luxury goods to essential items in this new normal, creative professionals are working on new ways to stay relevant. Many have now launched their individual websites as they view the online presence as the real key to growth, revenue and speedier brand recognition.
Home design brand Sarita Handa just launched their e-store. According to its director, Suparna Handa, online shopping allows social distancing and gives clients a broader selection across brands, and all-time access to the store from their electronic devices. “The Sarita Handa brand has been in the market for eight years now, and the customer has become accustomed to not necessarily ‘touch and feel everything’ since they know the quality. An online presence became necessary for growth,” says Handa.
Suparna Handa
Judging the market perspective she says, “Every forecast shows us post-Covid-19, it’s that the market share for e-commerce will expand dramatically, perhaps even double. With more people shopping online and others almost forced to try it for the first time, digital sales might account for upwards of 20 per cent of the home décor items market once things settle down.”
Similarly, Design Gaatha, another home design brand has launched their website, showcasing the brand’s quilts, bedsheets, table-runners. Co-founder Nidhi Jaiswal says, “Having our own platform gives more visibility to our creativity. We are getting positive reviews and I am hopeful things will soon pick up,” adds Jaiswal.
Shashiv Chandran, Founder and Managing Director of Utsav, a handloom brand has also come up with an exclusive website. He says the pandemic has been a very trying time for the handloom industry resulting in loss in work for many weavers and craftsmen, despite being extremely skilled. “Utsav sustains not only its in-house team, but also a large network of master craftsmen, smaller weavers, block printing units and even embroidery units from across the country, who have been working with us for decades. Using the lockdown period to create an online store was not only an expansion, but also provided a psychological boost to the craftsmen. While going online was always the next step for Utsav, the current circumstances made us take the leap into the web world.”
He further gives a lowdown on how Utsav plans to raise the sales due to this particular launch. “For a long time now, Utsav has been functioning mostly out of New Delhi with bi-yearly exhibitions in Chandigarh and Mumbai. Owing to the current circumstances sales have been at its lowest in many years. With the online platform, we hope to create a new market and hopefully someday also go international,” informs Chandran.