Festive season looks promising for ethnic wear brands

Festive season is the time when ethnic wear brands shine. All the brands in the category put their best foot forward to woo the consumers during this time of the year. Ethnic wear brands are expecting double-digit growth this festive season.

Karan Kumar

Fabindia is expecting a 25% jump in their sales and revenue. “Festive season constitutes a large part of sales and revenue for ethic wear brands. It is around 15-25%. It is a very important window from a business point of view. As far as Fabindia is concerned, our products have a fairly healthy demand and sales through the course of the year. We don’t give any discount and we don’t really have any off-season or end of season sales. It is slightly over-indexed during the festive season but it is not that over indexed to us as compared to other retailers,” said, Karan Kumar, Chief Brand and Marketing Officer, Fabindia.

Srinivas Rao

For Lifestyle, festive season is a big game changer in terms of sales and revenue. Srinivas Rao, Senior Vice President, Marketing, Lifestyle, said, “Festive season contributes around 30-35% to overall sales and revenue. Lifestyle is also hopeful for promising growth this year.”

Giving a glimpse of Lifestyle’s marketing plan, he said, “We try to do something different every festive season. This year we have curated fashion collection and to it is more convenient for the consumers to shop by decoding and putting together various looks for the festive season. We have roped in renowned stylist, Mohita Rai. He helped us put down 25-30 looks for men and women separately. We have showcased all those looks. We have kept in mind the latest trend to make it convenient for the consumers to shop at the store or online. We also have a TVC that captures the spirit of what the brand stands for. Coming to our in-house brand, Melange, it is an essential part of our festive collection. We have brought all the latest trends at Melange,” he added.

According to Rao, Lifestyle spends around 2-3% annually on marketing. “During the festive season the spend goes up to around 4-5%,” he said.

“We spend one-third of our budget each on television and print and around 10-12% on digital. The rest is spent on outdoors,” he added.

Talking about this year’s marketing plan of Fabindia, Kumar said, “Our marketing strategy is indexed by getting the products positioned rightly starting from the festive season, till the season of wedding and other celebrations. We have a very large and diverse range inspired by royalty of yesteryear. We have a campaign anchored around royals where we tried to bring some of the royal influences of the yesteryears and try and create a product range which is contemporary, elegant and which has some beautiful embellishments and subtle detailing.”

“In terms of indexation, the marketing spends at this time of the year is over-indexed to the balanced part of the year. There is a great focus that we are putting on the overall marketing efforts when it comes to influencer led marketing, social issue led marketing and storytelling led marketing,” he added.

Fabindia gives importance to both conventional and digital media during this season. Kumar said, “70% of our budget is allocated to conventional media that includes magazines and OOH. The rest is largely skewed towards social and digital which is around 30%. Increasingly, a lot of our activities are focused on social and digital media. We are also working with influencers and bloggers. A lot of audio-visual stories and content have been created and a lot of shoots have happened in that area.”

Fabindia is expecting a promising growth for their online sales as we.

“Recently we launched our refreshed website. It has a new and fresh feel to it. We have also launched a small section for men in apparels. The sales we do through our web store is very promising,” said Kumar.

The Indian ethnic wear market is expected to grow at 10% CAGR during 2018-2022 according to a report by Research and Markets. Online sales of ethnic wears have also seen growth in the past couple of years.

According to Kumar, the impact of GST has also waned. “It has stabilised now. The tax regime is much clearer now. Though there have been some changes in the past with regard to the tax regime, some slabs being moved up and down and some being rationalised, yet after the last round of changes that have happened, it has become pretty stable for the industry.”

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