IMStylish.in; An E-Commerce Portal For Style Freaks
Arguably the flavour of the season, fashion and lifestyle holds a huge scope in the online shopping sphere. Fashion accessories are becoming popular at a fast pace. 60% of the Indian audience is the youth, who hold a deep interest in upgrading their style via fashion and lifestyle products. Shopping of fashion accessories has no end and websites such as Jabong, snapdeal pepperfry, yebhi, fashionandyou and myntra that are full of no-brands to branded products are gaining incredible popularity.Closely observing these trends, a team of Digital marketers, after promoting a lot of e-commerce businesses, decided to start their own product in the e-commerce space. That is how in September 2011, they launched IMStylish with about 200 products products from fashion accessories and home décor and have recently started offering Electronics accessories as well.
The parent company is Blue Digital Media Pvt Ltd.: a digital Marketing agency focused on both Branding and performance campaigns. “We were keeping a close watch on the demand in the e-commerce space. Fashion accessories hold a 36% share of all product categories sold online. Fashion accessories is a category that always excites youth, and they would love to add style to their lives in every phase of life,” says co-founder Gaurav Singhal, a Google Certified professional, a Computer Science post-graduate and Founder of Search Marketing ( started in 2001).
They believe the USP of IMStylish is that they sell branded yet affordable products, and also stylish and non-branded quality products. “Timely delivery and competitive pricing are also our USP. Over the last few months we have observed that the products we are introducing on our website are having first time movers on the Internet,” adds Gaurav.
Target Audience:
Being 6 months old in the market, IMStylish gets approximately 3,000 visitors a day and 7,000 page views daily. Their revenue target for the present year is 20 crores.
Out of 100 million internet users, their intent is to target a market size as huge as approx 50 million young online audiences and therefore stock products for Men, Women and Kids with a long list of Unisex products. At the moment, they have opted both the models- Procurement and then Sales, and buying back to back. Out of which, 70% of the products are procured as per the orders and stocks for the rest 30% are maintained. They keep the fast moving products with them in store for faster delivery.
With concerns to the revenue model, the founders have decided not to sell any product in losses, including overhead costs and product returns. They believe, in such a competitive world eventually, it becomes a volume game. Marketing costs and cost of acquiring a customer is currently their investment cost. Overall, they plan to operate at a 10% margin.
Expansion Plans:
A team of 25 passionate stylers, with expertise in various fields, IMSTylish is a mix of people who come from backgrounds like marketing, merchandising, technology etc. Having self funded so far, in the next 3 months, they are looking to raise Angel funding.
“5 years down the line, IMStylish would grow in all respects. If we look from the team size, we would become a team of 500 people, doing 20,000 transactions a day. We would be the most preferred site, with respect to quality shopping and delivery of products. Our expansion plans are divided into phases, considering transactions and number of products. Phase 1 with 10,000 transactions/month and 20,000 products; and Phase 2 with 40,000 transactions/month and 50,000 products,” said Gaurav.
Gaurav faced several challenges while starting up. The major challenges came from selecting vendors who could give products on their conditions at reasonable prices and in setting up a passionate team. The product delivery system was another issue in the absence of a trusted and reliable logistics company.
A style freak yourself? Do check out IMStylish for more information and also read about Craffts for a similar fashion-story!
