Pepperfry undergoes brand revamp, aims Rs 3,000 crore revenue

The online furniture brand Pepperfry, which is targeting to clock a revenue of Rs 3,000 crore by the end of this fiscal, has revamped its look with a refreshed logo and a new brand identity.

To ensure that the brand reaches its ambitious sales target as per the timeline and continues to be on the growth trajectory, the company has entered the thriving furniture rental segment as well, along with a target of reaching out to 20 million homes in next three years. Earlier, Pepperfry focused solely on selling furniture and related accessories. 

Kashyap Vadapalli

“We want to beautify 20 million homes by 2020. So, the 20 million is roughly the SEC-A urban population and we want to ensure that there is at least one piece from Pepperfry in everybody’s house,” said Kashyap Vadapalli, CMO and Business Head, Pepperfry.com.

The company that hit the Rs 1,000 crore gross merchandise volume (GMV) mark last year has set itself a target of Rs 3,000 crore revenue by March 18.

The new logo of the five-year old e-retailer espouses its three core values and will embody the shift in the brand’s identity.

Talking about the new concept and thought process behind the design of new logo, Vadapalli said, "The three core values of our brand are ‘Intensity, Diversity and Joyfulness’. By intensity, we mean our desire to go the extra mile to find a solution to problems. We serve everybody in this segment and that is where the diversity bit comes in and finally when we realised buying furniture is a source of anxiety for a lot of people, we have tried to find solutions to that problem and that is where the joyfulness aspect comes in."

Vadapalli explained that the smiley in the logo was the basis of the font of the new logo and also how the three core values fit in to it.

“The smiley is the foundation of this new logo. We worked on the smiley to form that curved unit and we have used that across all of the letters in the logo. That is what has led to the basic shape of the font. The next step was to choose the colour. Since, intensity is one of our core values, we went with red and bright orange because these are intense colours. We also chose a vignette because it gives a sense of movement but more importantly it symbolises diversity for us,” said Vadapalli.

Pepperfry launched its first franchise studio in Bengaluru in October this year, taking the total number of their studios to 23. The brand plans to launch 25 more studios, some of them in non-metros as well, in the coming eight months and take the total number of studios to 48.

“We have 23 studios right now and we would like to get to 48 studios. Over the next six to eight months we think we can open 25 more studios. Some of them will be our own studios and some of them will be via the franchise route. So, places like Coimbatore, Mysore, Vishakhapatnam, Indore, Kanpur and Goa among others will see studio Pepperfrys cropping up,” said Vadapalli.

The franchise studios will allow customers to book and pay for an order from the studio. This is a feature that is currently not available in the company-owned studios. The franchise studios will also operate on a commission-based revenue model with margins spanning 8-13 per cent per order. 

The furniture market in India, according to Vadapalli, is $20 billion strong or roughly Rs 130,000 crore. Of which, 90 per cent is dominated by the unorganised market.

“The online furniture business is about 15-20 per cent of the organised business. So, that comes to about Rs 2,000 crore and we roughly hold 50-60 per cent of the online furniture market,” said Vadapalli.

Pepperfry has been spending close to Rs 100 crore annually on marketing and Vadapalli says that the spilt between traditional media and digital is 50-50.

“About 80 per cent of our traditional media is television and we support it a little bit with outdoor. Digital marketing, for us, is primarily led by search and re-marketing and little bit through social and content,” added Vadapalli.

GST on furniture and a lot of the categories that Pepperfry functions in falls under the highest slab, that of 28 per cent. Speaking about the impact of GST on the business, Vadapalli said, “Initially, there was a lot of fear that it will potentially drive the prices up but that hasn’t really happened. On the face of it the tax seems to have gone up from 14 per cent VAT to 28 per cent GST, but when you added excise and octroi the number actually was 25 per cent. So, the difference is not much and therefore we are able to provide similar value to consumers as were doing earlier,” explained Vadapalli.

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