CaratLane Aims at Overall Revenues of Rs.150 Crores for FY13 withNew Launch

CaratLane.com, India’s largest online retailer of solitaires, jewellery and gold coins launched its first ‘Solitaire Experience Lounge’, in New Delhi today. This first of its kind initiative in the Indian e-commerce landscape, was inaugurated by beauty queen and Bollywood actress, Amy Jackson. The Solitaire Experience Lounge helps customers to get a first hand feel of the CaratLane brand, speak to diamond consultants, try on samples of the jewellery and experience the online buying process.The Solitaire Experience Lounge will be an on-ground extension of the CaratLane online store and aims to educate customers about diamonds and diamond buying. The Lounge will also help facilitate transactions by handholding customers through the entire buying process. The 400 sq ft hi-tech walk-through lounge, is designed to encourage ‘browsing’, like on a website or at a luxury store. It has several touch screens (including one at the window that can be used even without stepping into the store!) that showcase the CaratLane collection and make diamonds easy to fathom. Customers can find the perfect diamond of their choice from a range of over 1,20,000 solitaires and evaluate the quality and integrity of diamonds through MS Surface-based interactive screens that provide detailed information about each piece of jewellery. Customers can continue to enjoy up to 25% savings on Solitaires as the pricing in the Lounge will be the same as on the website

“The Solitaire Experience Lounge is about taking CaratLane to where the customer is. The idea is to bring the website into the Indian retail environment and create another touch point for the customer. Research tells us that a lot of times customers are willing to buy online but they just want to ‘see’ the organization. We believe that by bridging the online-offline gap, this initiative has the potential to be a game changer for e-commerce and diamond buying in India. We will set up six Solitaire Experience Lounges across the country during 2012-13, with Mumbai and Hyderabad coming up next.” said Mithun Sacheti, CEO and co-founder, CaratLane.

Inaugurating the Solitaire Experience Lounge, Amy Jackson, said, “The Solitaire Experience Lounge combines the best of the online and offline buying experience. A customer can walk in here, browse the large collection, talk to the experts and understand finer aspects of buying diamonds. I am sure that I will keep coming back!”

The jewellery experts at the Solitaire Experience Lounge will take special care to run through the buying process of diamonds with each customer, in adherence to CaratLane’s thrust on customer education on diamond purchases. The actual purchase of diamonds and other precious jewellery, however, can be made online at CaratLane.com or at the Experience Lounge. This initiative, while being targeted at customers who are increasingly tuned to the idea of making high value purchases online, will at the same time reach out to the traditional diamond and solitaire buyer who requires high personal attention due to the nature of the category. 

Having added the hybrid model of online at retail, CaratLane is targeting overall revenues of Rs.150 crores for FY13. CaratLane will continue to make investments to strengthen merchandizing, operations and technology apart from the investments in new Experience Lounges.

For further details, please visit www.caratlane.com