Flipkart partners with Max Fashion to expand fashion category ahead of festive season

Walmart-owned Flipkart on Wednesday said it has partnered with Max Fashion, a move that will help the ecommerce major offer an expanded portfolio of apparel and accessories to customers ahead of the festive season.

Flipkart will offer more than 13,000 new styles from Max Fashion, a brand under the banner of Dubai-based Landmark Group, with majority of these products under Rs 1,000 price point, a statement said.

The partnership will also provide Max Fashion with wider market access as its products across categories, including apparel, accessories, and footwear, will be available in newer geographies and pin codes, it added.

Max Fashion has about 340 stores across 130 cities in the country, and already sells more than 100 million garments through its omni-channel presence.

Max Fashion's products are also sold on Flipkart's rival Amazon India's platform.

"We have been working on expanding our omni-channel presence and the importance of that was clear with the pandemic situation," Shital Mehta, CEO of Max Fashion India and MD, Lifestyle International, told PTI.

"We have seen our revenues from online channel grow significantly in the last few months and online now makes an early double-digit contribution (in percentage) to our business," Mehta added.

He said the company has been rapidly growing its presence both offline and online.

"This partnership with Flipkart enables us to further expand our presence and reach the next 200 million customers who live in Tier-II and III cities and provide them access to our amazing fashion at unbelievable prices," he said.

Nishit Garg, Vice President - Flipkart Fashion, said the partnership with Max Fashion is one of its biggest collaborations this year.

"We believe that the latest trends should be made accessible to all consumers across the country and our partnership with Max Fashion is in line with this vision. We will continue to bridge the gap between customers in metros and Tier II and beyond regions, where customers are seeking the best of current fashion trends, but have limited access from a selection, range and affordability perspective," he added.

Garg said the partnership with Max Fashion will help bring enormous value through a wide selection, range and quality fashion products.

Ecommerce companies see a large chunk of their business coming in during the festive sales and they make significant investments ahead of time to ramp up their capacity to be able to handle the spike in orders.

Electronics, fashion and home furnishing are some of the categories that see huge demand in the festive season.

According to a report by RedSeer, festive sales are expected to almost double this year and touch $7 billion in gross merchandise value (GMV) as compared to $3.8 billion in the same period last year.

GMV is a term used in online retailing to indicate the gross merchandise value of products sold through the marketplace over a certain period of time.

The report had noted that this year "Bharat" and democratisation-theme, enabled by COVID-19, will see the maximum number of shoppers buy online during festive sales with many coming from Tier-II cities and beyond.

It estimated that 45-50 million people shopped online last year in the first sale during festive season offered by various players like Flipkart, Amazon, Snapdeal and Shopclues.

Festive season sees players holding multiple sale events, timed around Dussehra and Diwali.