Straddling two worlds

Online brands are sketching in a physical avatar, bringing form to their intangible existences

The real and the virtual worlds are converging. Online brands are sketching in a physical avatar, bringing form and shape to their hitherto intangible existences.

Flipkart-owned fashion retailer Myntra opened its first Roadster brand store in Bengaluru this year, calling it an experiment from which it will learn and open more stores across the country. Ananth Narayanan, CEO of Myntra, says that while the company is undoubtedly venturing out of its comfort zone, it actually can develop an edge over offline rivals by using the data it has gathered over the years online. 

“For most offline stores the problem I think is driving traffic or footfalls, but for instance we know that there are 40,000 Roadster customers in this area,” he says.

Another online only retailer that recently began testing the waters offline is China’s Xiaomi. While the company had been selling its popular smartphones in stores for over a year, it recently opened its first own brand store in Bengaluru, and says its aim to bring down the cost of selling offline through its own stores.

Xiaomi claims using the traditional offline channel doubles the cost of the smartphone since there are so many pieces to the chain. Industry experts are a little more conservative in their estimates, and they say that selling devices offline is 30 per cent more expensive than online. For Xiaomi, which is built around affordability, this is unacceptable. Through its stores it wants to make the cost of selling devices offline as efficient as selling online, both in terms of cost and user experience.