Limited waves at Flipkart mega fashion sale

First category-specific draw sees only 3x rise in lifestyle segment traffic on Day 1

It's for the first time since its inception that Indian e-commerce poster boy Flipkart is holding a category-specific sale. However, the response from buyers appeared lukewarm on the first of the two-day event, compared to what was seen during earlier such discounts.

As against its landmark 'Big Billion Day' sale, when the company had witnessed an unprecedented spike in traffic, the portal on Friday saw only a three-time increase in traffic compared to what it sees for the lifestyle category on a regular day.

During the sale, Flipkart said, it would offer discounts on around 300,000 products, 50 steal deals and around 250 other offers. Advertisements in newspapers on Friday morning said, 'The Flipkart Fashion Sale' included a “minimum 55 per cent off” on products across clothing, footwear and accessories. “I won't call a three-times traffic 'tepid, but the fact is there are a lot of sales running right now across online and brick-and-mortar retailers, so consumers have several choices,” said Ankur Bisen, senior vice-president the of retail & consumer products division at Technopak. “Flipkart's sale is perhaps one among the many others right now and so, the response could have been lukewarm.”

Several experts pointed to the timing as a reason for the mild response. However, Ankit Nagori, senior vice-presdent, marketplace, at Flipkart told Business Standard: “With the season ending for all brands, we will be offering never-before discounts which will be a major attraction of this sale. Of course, with Valentine's Day coinciding with our sale, we expect more traction for lifestyle products, including popular gifting items like perfumes, jewellery and other accessories.”

Social media, seen going abuzz on the days when e-commerce portals had hosted sale events, did not see much discussion around the 48-hour event, except for a few discussions around consumers who had to wait to access the website early on Friday morning.

Interestingly, several regular consumers of e-commerce said they did not see Flipkart as the right destination for buying fashion and lifestyle-related items and, thus, did not wish to shop from the event.

“Flipkart is not the place I would shop for fashion,” said Mumbai-based communications professional Fatema Khokhar. “For clothes, shoes and accessories, I would prefer shopping on Myntra or Jabong, and I did shop during the time those websites ran end-of-season sales. I did not even check what Flipkart is offering in today's sale.”

Technopak's Bisen felt vertical-focused entities such as Myntra and Jabong had made heavy investments in establishing themselves as serious players in the fashion and lifestyle categories. Whereas the horizontal players such as Flipkart, Snapdeal and Amazon are still “not there”.

Having learnt lessons from earlier experience, Flipkart had prepared well for this sale. “For both the days, the entire Flipkart home page, both on desktops and the mobile application, will be showcasing only lifestyle products. This has never been done before for any category,” said Nagori. “We are also scaling up our technology and supply chain teams to cater to the large-scale demand we are expecting across these two days.”