FabAlley Plans To Invest $1 Million For Offline Expansion

In an interview with BW BusinessWorld, co-founder and CEO’s of FabAlley Tanvi Malik and Shivani Poddar talk about their plans for the times to come in order to grow their business. After gaining an online presence, they believe that having an offline presence can drive their business more efficiently.

 Q- Why did you decide to bring FabAlley to an offline market? Has the competition risen extensively in the online fashion industry?

We have been testing out offline with departmental stores for quite some time, we have 50 shop-in-shop with Central which is Future Group’s fashion chain which has been profitable from day 1. Offline is proving to be good opportunity for us and Faballey’s plan is to be the pre-eminent fashion brand of the country, which means that being present at every touch-point relevant to our consumer, whether online or offline. So, an EBO in Bengaluru, which is one of our key performing cities both online and offline made a lot of sense to us. The Whitefield catchment is just right, the audience is what FabAlley anyway retails to.

Q- How much do you plan to invest in the offline segment of the business?

We would be opening 8-10 stores in the next one year and initially these are going to be in metros including NCR, Mumbai, Bengaluru, Hyderabad and Pune in the first phase and hence plan to invest $1 Million for the offline expansion.

Q- What is the business and marketing strategy of FabAlley?

Top facts about FabAlley’s business model

• FabAlley is an online first brand for young, fashion forward women where every single product is designed and manufactured in house keeping in mind the latest trends
• FabAlley has a strong presence in all western wear categories including tops, dresses, skirts, accessories, etc. The brand launched their plus size line in 2016 which has become the largest online plus size brand in India
• FabAlley started offline expansion in 2016 and now has 50 shop in shops with Central and 1 exclusive brand outlet in Bangalore
• Currently FabAlley has a large presence in all key clothing and accessory categories with 3000+ SKUs in Clothing and 500+ SKUs in Accessories. All the products on FabAlley are designed and manufactured in-house, ensuring a very short lead time between trend capturing and manufacturing. The products are extremely affordable with an average Top costing Rs 1400 and Jewelry under Rs 800
• Our marketing strategy is digital-first, with aggressive advertising on Facebook, Youtube and Google. We also create seasonal, topical digital campaigns that resonate with our audience.

Q- What are the brand’s growth plans?

FabAlley has grown from INR 20 lakhs monthly sales in 2013 to INR 6 Cr in monthly sales now. The growth has come from expansion in both the online and offline segment along with constant product expansion. The Company now runs 3 brands – FabAlley, FabAlley Curve and fusion wear brand Indya and all 3 brands are the market leaders in their respective segments.

FabAlley aims to be the one-stop destination for every fashion and beauty need for the urban Indian women. With this roadmap, horizontal expansion into more categories such as lingerie and shoes and a vertical expansion across all existing categories are imminent. The fast-fashion model has been one of FabAlley’s greatest strengths and we will continue to hone it further to ensure even faster lead times and dynamism. With FabAlley’s global appeal and international look-and-feel, we will be focusing on international expansion into North America and UK.

At FabAlley, fashion content is as important as e-commerce. We want fashion to become an intrinsic lifestyle genome for urban Indian women. To this end, we are working on building a community for like-minded girls to read, interact with each other and be inspired by global style, trend bytes and engaging contests. With live updates of all major fashion-oriented happenings across the world, the FabAlley blog seeks to become the top-of-mind portal for fashion and lifestyle content.

Q- What are the fashion wears FabAlley concentrates on for women?

We are primarily an online led fast fashion western wear brand and our fusion-wear category ‘INDYA’ is another segment we have branched out. FabAlley comprises only 20% of ethnic-wear of our entire inventory. Similarly, we also have a category called ‘Curve’ that caters to curvy and plus-sized women. In short, we don’t really concentrate on one category, we concentrate on our customer and her various needs at different occasions.

Q- Has the brand received any funding in the past? How much did it cost you to open your first store?

We did our first round with Indian Angel Network with USD 113 million and post that we did another small round with them and the series A round was announced last year Oct which was with India Quotient Funding for USD 2 million. Our investment in the store is about Rs.3000 per sq. feet and 3-4 months in an EBO setup will be break-even for us.

Q- What are the targets you have set for the offline store? How are you sustaining the business?

Our aim is to be profitable at every door we operate within the first quarter of operations. Expansion for the purpose of pure scale is not our goal, but creating self-sustaining mini-business units is.

Q- Where do you see your brand in the next 5 years?

In next 3-5 years, our goal is to be a 500 Cr GMV company. The plan for this financial year end is that offline would be between 25% and 30% of FabAlley’s revenue.