Koovs

Do men shop too?

Of course they do, says Koovs!

Koovs, as we know markets Western street styles and limited edition designer pieces. It when asked for a comment said men contribute to 40% of their sales, spending almost as much time per session as women do. They spend equally Rs.2000 a month or so according to Jabong which also claims a 40% male customer-base. Compared to women men buy higher value items. They buy fewer and costlier items. Women are mostly led by discounts but men by the quality and brand of the product.

Myntra, on the other hand, says it has more men than women checking out.60:40. "Men are getting increasingly fashion forward, especially in tier 2 and 3 cities," says Sivaram Kowta, vice president, Men's Apparel, Myntra. With an eye on developing their male clientele, Myntra recently introduced a Plus Size store which accounts for 13% of men's apparel sales. "And we recently organised a Mantastic Day sale for the first time. It saw a great response and we plan to host the next edition soon," says Kowta.

This change is being called the Menaissance - men’s awakening to fashion and style. Men are now willing to be fashionable and style. It is not like fashion is only men anymore.

I guess, in future, we’ll also get to hear complaints of women claiming their husbands are spending too much shopping or that they have more shoes than their wives do. Funny, right? But not not possible.

India's online fashion market is on its way to becoming the most-shopped digital category by 2020, according to a Google-AT Kearney report, accounting for about $21 billion (Rs 1.4 lakh crore) of the country's total e commerce spending by then.

Currently, Flipkart, with its fashion units Myntra and the recently acquired Jabong, is estimated to have a 65-70% share of India's online fashion market. Amazon and Snapdeal claim another 20-25% share. Even if the niche retailers account for a 10% market share by 2020, as now, that would still be a significant $2.1 billion.

How much of it is going to be men is yet to be seen!

A quick update on the financials:

Koovs reported gross sales of Rs. 162 Crores for the full year ended 31st March 2017. Which is a neat 87% year growth from last year, where it was just Rs.98.1 crores. This is only sales, which would also include returns. In the previous year 98.1 crores was in gross sales, where net sales were 68.7 crores according to their annual report. Ie., returns were 29.78% of gross sales. If the company hasn’t disclosed all revenues, gross sales won’t represent all the revenues the company made. Revenues in FY16 were Rs.51.24 crores and so its loss was Rs.165.04 crores. For FY17 this data is not available yet and is yet to be waited for.

Koovs said it “continued to improve its gross margin position by improving intake margin and controlling the level of discounts given, and expects to generate positive gross margins in FY18.”

Whether it would achieve positive gross margins is yet to be seen. Lets just hope they do in FY18 so at least there is one company out there which doesn’t only produce losses but also revenues.

All the best Koovs!

Wondering how and what actually went on since the inception of Koovs? Here you go!

In an interview of late, Gaurav Nabh, Marketing director at Koovs said this about the brand:

“A fashion brand excited me more than the category. In the current scenario, e-Commerce players are spending 8X money on discounts and promos, 2X-3X money on building brands and very less brands on building a product. This is a big problem. When I was discussing about joining Koovs.com, I found that the brand is working exactly in an opposite manner to the e-Commerce space. 8X of its money is going into product.

Players in the e-Commerce space have to understand that if they have a great product, people will follow. For example, consumers across the globe visit traditional garment brand outlets for buying clothes. And these stores do not offer discounts but people visit there regularly as they offer great product.”

True to his word - the brand did gain a good customer without having to give discounts there by putting a dent in their cash reserve there by reducing the money that goes into the product itself.

So such a fashion band as Koovs, which seem to have changed its business models quite a lot, until it was sure of what worked, how did it start? Who started it? Read through for answers.

Koovs was established in 2010 and its Indian headquarters are at Gurgaon! Founders being Amit Shukla, Manish Tiwari and Rajesh Kamra! A dream destination for every fashion forward person! Their designs are inspired by the universal runaways, celebrity looks, and global street style. Fashion that is captivating and yet at affordable prices!

Group buying was a rage back in 2010. Around 50 companies mushroomed with the same motto of allowing Koovs. But that didn’t work for long. Koovs like any other business started with heavy deals and discounts of 50-90%. It used to be a digital platform for businesses like restaurants, clothes sellers etc. Sales of these businesses were increased over the platform. Koovs being the first company to have done it garnered a lot of attraction of the customers and in no time it had 5 lakh subscribers. Huge, right? Well, then investors started looking at it too. And in 2011, BenefitsPLUS, a rewards and loyalty program company invested $2 million for stake in the company. Then since what they were doing wasn’t going anywhere, they moved on to being a ecommerce platform from being a deal site. This was when Nahata family entered for a 44% stake in the company. They invested INR 140 crores to start dealing with sales of mobiles and electronic gadgets. But this wasn’t working out for them either.

Nahata’s family owned a 44% stake in company, such losses once they burnt their fingers meant a huge loss for them. Most would’ve chosen to just shut stop and be happy with whatever was left. But Anant Nahata did something different. Since he knew  there were Amazon and Flipkart like major players to do broad-based fashion, he decided to do a niche  and move to high street fashion instead. This decision wasn’t easier. It meant convincing a lot of people. But Anant was determined. And so he did achieve it. The he pulled in Waheed Alli on board as Chairman of Koovs, and Robert Bready as Director of Creative and Retail. Cool move! Considering the experience they have in the industry. That also worked out quite well for Koovs.

Alli is a British politician and the former chairman of Asos.com, a UK-based online fashion retail giant. Under Alli, the company grew 750 times in 12 years, and has revenues of $3 billion today. Bready was the product and training head of Asos.com. Nahata's wife Neha, who is a fashion designer, assists him in curating the latest designs.

Nahata surely is trying to replicate the offline model of Zara. He seems to be primarily investing in Technology, primarily mobile this year.

Unlike other brands Koovs has always been seen collaborating with different people who can give the brand a different and cool design with an edge over rivals. They one roped in London-based illustrator Hattie Stewart, who was known for her unique and playful artwork. She designed for the women’s collection which totally was in line with terms that Koovs adheres too - cool, comfortable, laidback and quirky. In another instance, they tied up Delhi-based designer-duo Gauri and Nainika Karan in 2016 for a line of elegant party dresses for women. The collection was launched in Novemeber, last year.

Manish Arora who has until now designed fashion for women only and is known for it was approached by Koovs to design Men’s wear. Probably the first time he did. But when the collection was launched on Koovs, it became an instant super hit.

That’s the thing with Koovs, they always do things differently. And they also claim that there is talent and Koovs knows how to find it. All the designs are done in India and London but the sourcing of material and manufacturing in India.

Coming to their marketing their first multi media campaign campaign is Step into Koovs.Which surely is a success.It comes with a music video too. The campaign makes use of television, cinema billboards, print media, digital media that has helped Koovs increase the sales by a monstrous 210%. When this campaign was launched, nobody thought about this much success of the campaign as it has recorded sales of INR 29.5 crores in just 14 weeks which was merely INR 9.5 crores for the same period in last year. Apart from this, Koovs has witnessed its weekly traffic of more than 1.5 million visitors. It has also increased the brand awareness to 8 per cent which was 1 percent earlier. Content developed around culture is one way of getting customers to see it. After Step into Koovs theirs sales, installs, customer numbers have gone up. And with tech to make smart decisions and people to support them Koovs does look like it knows what it is doing.

In terms of marketing for this category, there are not many challenges that it might face. But then the bigger challenge would be to figure out what the customer would want to buy 6 months from now. And Koovs trying to build technology that would be able to answer such questions. Koovs.com aims to be distinctive, disruptive and constantly go out to the relevant consumer. The question is how does one address the blind spot?

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It is a known fact that fashion and lifestyle segment space in India is quite overcrowded. Fashion Trinity Flipkart, Myntra and Jabong together share a decent 70% of the market while remaining players fight in the 30%.

There are many aspiring players in the space like Koovs, StalkBuyLove, LimeRoad, CoutLoot, Wooplr in this 30%.

But if recent reports were to be believed Koovs the fashion e-commerce players has registered a 87% growth in its sales. Which is 100% increase in its units. This e-tailer was also fashioned on the successful UK online retailer Asos. This London based company, whose India headquarter is located in Gurgaon, aims to generate gross positive margins by the financial year 2018. Cool, right?

But there is a definite competition in the fashion and lifestyle space. So if Koovs is here to stay, it should come up with something special to retain customers than just typical products. Hence the brand has recently decided to focus more on private labels. Talking to Media recently, Manisha Rana, CMO of Koovs said, having private-label online is becoming critical as it brings the differentiation factor in a brand’s product offering. She also said building business on deep discounts is not sustainable in the long run. True, as soon as the discounts are gone, customers will just move to other e-tailer throwing discounts. Meaning discounts demand sales not loyalty. So a differentiator factor could lay more a strong foundation to a long term relationship than discounts do.

Koovs currently holds a market share of 4% in the online western fashion space of India. They also signed a partnership with Souq.com recently which sells its private label line in the Middle East.

40% of their sales currently come from private labels and the brand is still aiming to increase the number. They are also coming up with a lot of innovative marketing campaigns according to a source