Dressed to a tee

E-commerce portals discover a lucrative business model in personalising apparel

Personalising apparel, like t-shirts and jerseys, has become a popular way of making a fashion statement without being one with the herd. E-commerce portals have been quick in leveraging this trend by enabling users to customise a wide range of products with designs, slogans and graphics of their choice.

One of the early entrants among such portals is Myntra.com, which has an online market share of 50 per cent. Launched in May 2007 with just seven people, the portal now has 120 employees. “We started by selling five to 10 t-shirts a day. Now, we sell around 1,000 tees,” says Mukesh Bansal, CEO, myntra.com. The portal’s sales have jumped more than a hundred fold in the last three years. From a mere 20, now, more than 5,000 designers contribute their designs to the site.

Myntra’s experience is replicated by others. Although online sales took a hit in 2008-09, most e-commerce portals managed to attract customers with huge discounts, packaged deals and unique designs. Scopial.com, is one such online community-based t-shirt designing company that prides itself on having the maximum number of international designers. The site offers a reward of $400 for each design it selects. “We not only provide international designs, but also a 60-day replacement or money-back option. Orders are delivered within 40-72 hours,” says Rahul Yadav, co-founder and COO, scopial.com.

Another e-commerce portal Blue Bus Tees sells over 1,000 t-shirts per month through such offline stores as “H2O” and “Black Trade” in Bandra, “Phirang” in Borivli and “0 Degrees” in Lokhandwala, and 15-20 pieces online per day.

“We noticed that in Mumbai, established brands like Tantra made predominantly India-themed t-shirts. So we thought of starting a website where people can design their own tees or get them designed by good graphic artists,” says Pranav Kapur, founder, Blue Bus Tees. Kapur, along with Abhir Khanna, started Blue Bus Tees in 2008. Armed with a working knowledge of textiles and experience in the fashion line, the duo invested Rs 10 lakh for the first three months.

Along with offline sales, most of these online portals also tie up with multi-national companies. For instance, Scopial.com tied up with Tata Consultancy Services and provided all its employees a special discount on every purchase. However, corporate designing does not always include personalising and can be just the company logo or name.

With the festive season on, the sites are gearing up with more discounts. “Sales jump 25-40 per cent each year around October-March, from the first half of the financial year,” points out Ravi Kumar, COO, dilsebol.com. Kumar, along with Suresh Subbian and Kapil Viswanathan, started dilsebol.com in Chennai. With 50 per cent of its sales coming from online purchases, the site’s sales have doubled every year since its inception in 2006.

Most of these online portals are also looking at personalising other products like bags, mugs and caps, among other things. Special edition t-shirts — like Twitter-themed tees (on Pringoo.com) and IPL-themed tees (on Myntra.com) — as well as factory outlets where one can buy a t-shirt at a heavier discount (on Inkfruit.com) have proven to be quite popular.

Online transactions have also been boosted by developments in the 3G space. Taking cues from various international e-commerce portals, many sites, like Scopial and Myntra, are planning to launch applications to support a smarter transaction system. Most of the sites already allow payment through phone.

The target market for personalised products is approximately Rs 10,000 crore. A new player entering the market would mean smaller share of the pie. However, “since the model is still in its infancy in India, the cost of the awareness can be shared,” says Kumar.