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Aditya Birla Group-owned Madura Fashion & Lifestyle is planning to float its own e-commerce site for Collective, its multi-brand super premium retail concept.
The company will sell its iconic high-fashion brands such as Armani and Versace through the new site. Madura Fashion already has a portal, trend.in, through which it sells brands such as Van Heusen, Pantaloon, Peter England and People.
Officials, however, say the new venture would be independent of the existing portal.
“Collective is a luxury concept and we will have an individual site for it which will be launched this fiscal. It’s in the luxury space and is addressing a different consumer from the rest of the brands of Madura Lifestyle,” says R Satyajit, Chief Operating Officer, Madura Fashion (International Brands & New Business).
Collective has nine stores, measuring 15,000 sq ft each. It may not be possible for the company to significantly scale up its stores due to size for which e-commerce would be an additional distribution channel.
However, Collective is unlikely to be part of the existing luxury portals as the company prefers to stay away from the discounting route.
“Most existing luxury sites still do not know how to sell high-end fashion. We do not believe in heavy discounting. Once the war for valuation is over, there will be no need for heavy discounting,” says Satyajit.
Recently, the company decided to restrict its customised tailoring concept, My Fit, for the Van Heusen brand for men’s clothing, to its own site of trend.in.
“We want consumers to buy due to the strength of our brands and not on the basis of discounts. In the case of My Fit, we have created back-end capabilities like dedicated manufacturing lines, which is not possible through other e-commerce sites as they cannot provide these services,” says Vinay Bhopatkar, COO, Van Heusen.
Meanwhile, the Aditya Birla Group is also working on creating a separate vertical for its e-commerce business in the future.
“We have hired a person from McKinsey to build the e-commerce vertical for the group. Our brands may face a brick wall when it comes to growing in the metros for which we need an e-commerce channel in the future,” says Satyajit.
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