Future Bazaar plans to expand categories, redesign portal

Futurebazaar.com, the online initiative of Pantaloon Retail, plans to expand its existing categories to include more products. It is also planning to introduce physical formats to push sales and impulse purchase.

The one-year-old subsidiary of Pantaloon Retail, which has already racked in a turnover of Rs 62 crore, is expecting to cross Rs 180 crore in one year, on the back of relaunching its online portal with more dedicated online stores and an extensive range of products with a dedicated regional focus.

According to Sankarson Banerjee, CEO of Future Bazaar, “Wipro Technologies will redesign the store for us in sync with the relaunch. It would cost us Rs 20 crore to relaunch the online store. The new look is important as we are expanding our product range and categories to accommodate more products. Thrust will be on regional brands.”

The new-look online store would harp on better product display and details to ease purchase decisions.

To begin with, the company is looking at retailing regional language movies.

Currently the portal sells around 800 Hindi movie titles in addition to 400 regional titles.

Going forward, the company will introduce more regional titles to cater especially to people who are branching out to other cities but still has a regional interest.

The company will also expand its range of books to include more regional publishers.

Currently, Future Bazaar sells around 1,000 books, which will be taken up to around 12 lakh.

Apparel range will also be doubled from 7,500 right now.

“We are also looking at a few physical formats like 110 sq ft information centres which would stock catalogues of our entire product range. Customers have to walk into these centres, gather catalogue and place orders. Products will be delivered at the doorstep,” Banerjee explained.

“Our first such information centre came up in Mumbai and recorded sales of Rs 27 lakh in one year. The model has been so successful that we are planning to set up more of such centres in places like West Bengal, Mumbai and Gujarat,” Banerjee informed.

Futurebazaar.com sells 5,000 products listed under 185 categories now including categories like consumer durables, home décor, apparel, mobiles, watches and accessories.