How Flipkart & TIGC are tapping the lucrative FAST fashion market

Flipkart, India’s homegrown e-commerce company, recently launched an exclusive collection of ‘The Indian Garage Company’ in collaboration with Surya Kumar Yadav. Established in 2012 by Anant Tanted, The Indian Garage Co is a tech-enabled FAST-fashion D2C brand based in Bengaluru. The collection includes over 2,500 styles across men’s casual wear. Flipkart has observed a 30-35% yoy growth in the casual wear segment over the past year.

In an interaction with Adgully, Anant Tanted, Founder, The Indian Garage Co (TIGC) and Abhishek Maloo, Senior Director, Flipkart Fashion, speaks about the evolving trends in men’s fashion, the factors driving consumer choices, how The Indian Garage Company is trying to revolutionise the branded fashion space, and more.

What prompted Flipkart as a particular destination for you to launch this collection?

Anant Tanted: Flipkart is TIGC’s homegrown retailer. It has largely revolutionised the way India shops. It has created the power of sheer reach that is today unmatchable. Also, Flipkart happens to be strongly connected with the youth of India, in terms of their calculation in tier two and tier three cities and I think that is where it was much needed to penetrate the fashion that we created.

Abhishek Maloo: If you look at Flipkart as a platform, we have been around for some time now and the way we have built our marketplace and opened democratic marketplace for brands and sellers to operate on the platform is quite phenomenal over the last 10-12 years. If we talk about Flipkart fashion’s journey, there have been lakhs of brands and sellers who have actually participated on the platform to showcase their collections. We bring these collections from the brands and sellers to the millions of consumers across the length and breadth of the country. Not only in metro cities, but also in Tier 2, 3 and 4 cities. The towns have a population of 100,000, 150,000 200,000, and we reached those cities/ towns as well. Thus, fashion is a very large category as a platform.

The Indian Garage Company is trying to revolutionise the branded fashion space with very affordable prices by delivering value to the consumers. This is something Flipkart has been doing in the retail industry, where we make fashion affordable and accessible for the consumers. Keeping this basic fundamental reason in mind, we are glad to launch The Indian Garage Company in a big way on Flipkart as we share the common vision of democratising and making fashion affordable for the consumers. At the end of the day fashion is an aspirational category, where people are looking for aspirational styles, aspirational looks, and The Indian Fashion Garage Company has done a fantastic work in getting the right collections and price point.

Could you tell us more about the collection? How many SKUs does it involve? And what was the price range?

Anant Tanted: The current collection that we have launched is roughly 2,500 SKUs. This collection basically showcases across categories, across looks. We have kept a very value pricing for the current fashion consumers, we are operating within the price range of Rs 500-Rs 1,000 which is very affordable pricing. It cuts across all categories, like shirts, trousers, athleisure, etc. There is a lot of Gen Z related and street fashion that we have launched. We have also launched other clothing, keeping in mind all genres of customers that Flipkart caters to.

So, every possible look that can be thought of is a part of this collection. Right from different looks for airports, to different looks for parties and formal meet-ups. We have tried to capture the essence of every consumer – right from the time he gets up to the time he goes to sleep. And that’s how I think the collection is very unique.

Abhishek Maloo: Overall, I would say fashion would be around $100 billion business and men’s fashion itself constitutes 30-35%. Within this segment right now casual wear is something that we are observing at the highest degree. Even the formal wear is getting replaced by casuals. The kind of consumer browsing and search queries that we are getting from the consumers is really big. It is a large business, and it is also a space where revolution can happen from a price point and good quality value chain. Thus, I think this entire equation is a good equation, if you look at it in its entirety.

What are the unique consumer insights and findings on the basis of which this collection was conceptualised?

Anant Tanted: Over a period of time, we have seen how retail typically operates in India, where there used to be a lot of selection at the retailer end and a lot of curated collections used to reach the consumer. The biggest consumer insight that we got was by launching small capsule collections of the latest trends and FAST fashion, as well as understanding global fashion trends. The consumer really wants to experiment and wants to get off from everyday wear. Today’s youth is very confident and is aware of global fashion trends. With smaller capsule collections, we are able to understand the consumer needs and are able to take those FAST fashion brands that we want to offer to our consumers.

How do you view the growth of the casual wear and athleisure clothing industry in our country?

Abhishek Maloo: I am only talking about men's fashion in particular. I believe that the casual wear segment is emerging as the biggest segment of men’s fashion – and when I say men’s fashion, it includes apparel, shoes, accessories, eyewear and more. It is about a plethora of categories and not just clothing. As per market data, the growth of casual wear is higher than other segments – it would be anywhere in the double digit annual growth.

As a platform, customers are also looking for a much edgier choice of colours than the regular blacks and whites and blues. The choice in patterns and print work that the consumer is buying is also changing at a phenomenal pace. For instance, floral prints have suddenly become big. Thus, within men’s fashion, casual wear – whether it is young professionals or the 30-40 age group – is witnessing is a lot of changes – be it in the kind of merchandising on the platform, the interaction that the consumers do, whether it is static, catalog-based, video, catalog video, commerce – are all phenomenal.