Shop Shoes Online With New-Delhi Based FASHOS
FASHOS.com, a personalized online footwear destination, is a direct to consumer ecommerce vertical that e-tails shoes. Having footwear for men and women, they cover all 5 segments of footwear: formals, casuals, sports, party, slippers (sandals).Based in New Delhi, they have been operational since the 1st of November, 2011. Currently, they are a team of 15 ecommerce enthusiasts across functions, with a technology orientation and a passion for Internet consumer marketing.
“FASHOS.com is positioned as ‘The SMART way of buying shoes online’. SMART is a creative leap from one of FASHOS.com’s core uniqueness drivers- personalization. Users can create their own personalized shoe shopping experience on FASHOS.com by answering an intuitive questionnaire online, once they register with FASHOS.com. Users can go to their own ‘My Stores’ which have been stocked with shoes that match their tastes and preferences. The algorithm based code ensures that even if there is a gap in a user’s visit, the stock the user views is already refreshed based on the ongoing season he/she visits in. In other words, ‘My Stores’ are updated real time. 40% of all sales on FASHOS.com come through ‘My stores’. Personalization is an efficient and SMART way of buying shoes. As whatever the user views the user ends up liking and therefore, chances of transacting are higher as opposed to going through annals and annals of irrelevant products on similar sites within one category,” says Co-founder, Navin Joshua.
Consumer Base:
Online shoe sales market size, of overall footwear category, as per the latest ASSOCHAM report is 8% of INR 22000 crores. This is estimated to scale to 20% of about 38000 crores by 2015. The online lifestyle category operates around a 35 – 40% gross margin, where Fashos.com claims to make margins mapping to industry levels. Their typical customer is a male or female in the age group of 22 – 40 yrs. Their target group is predominantly young working professionals and individuals who are lifestyle oriented, high on grooming and have a fair SOW (Share of Wallet).On the sourcing side, Fashos has partnered with several brands as well as authorized distribution channels. For marketing, they have engaged with leading ad networks as well as organic channels both above and below the line. FASHOS also claims to have a presence on selective marketplace models to enhance outreach channels. Still in very early days, they are testing waters with changes in the channel mix of their partner ecosystem.
Starting up:
The brainchild of the duo - Navin Joshua and Sumit Agarwal, Fashos.com believes in striking the right chord in a short span and aims at carving a niche for itself in the Indian market.Navin and Sumit worked together for over a decade in the CRM space, engaging with retail clientele across global as well as the Indian ecommerce space. Their motivation of building a business in the online segment was to create a customer ecosystem that found value in a differentiated engagement experience that is personalized and effective. The lifestyle/fashion vertical enables that level of interaction and customer expectation that the founders were excited to build out.
Seed capital for this venture was put in by the founders. “Some pre-operative angel capital has also been pooled in by a couple of HNIs within the Founder network. The team is evaluating additional funding and mentorship opportunities that will enable sustainable scale for FASHOS from the proof of concept stage,” Navin concludes.
