Indian Shoppers Shift to Curated Commerce
Have you endlessly scrolled through E-commerce pages in search of that elusive product that is different from all, stopped after sometime and just flung your phone on the side ? You are not alone. Brand coma is for real. Human mind gets bogged down with the gazillion choices made available for its own pleasure; ironically, mind likes lesser stimulus so that its decision making power functions better.
Catering to the growing population who gets overwhelmed with a plethora of choices available on giant E-commerce sites, Curated Commerce has taken a small but a hopeful leap in the retail world. Conceived to provide select but tasteful products that aren’t readily available on bigger sites, curated commerce is the game-changer in the retail scenario globally. India is catching up too, in time. From a mere $680 billion market in 2017, the Indian retail industry is expected to be worth a whopping $1.2 trillion by 2020 as per Indian Retailer. As more and more Indians are turning towards their smart phones to shop, the geographical barriers have taken a back seat. Amazon, Flipkart, Myntra, Jabong and Ajio have definitely revolutionised the way Indians shop for the sheer number of SKUs it loads on its sites. Growing double income of families, cheap smart phones, faster internet penetration and access to mass manufactured discounted products has made Indian shoppers used to a better lifestyle in fashion particularly.
But as the consumer behavioural psychology works, the desire to look and feel different from others is never going to go away. Shopping through the large retail sites is an exercise in searching page after page for a specific product, while scouring hyper-local review websites, home-grown designer shops and smaller online stores is a new way to discover unique, interesting products that are hard to find on large or generalist retail sites. The erstwhile scenario of shopping from retail giants for heavy discounts is now shifting towards curated shopping experience for the sheer ease in shopping.
RISE OF CURATED COMMERCE
Enter the world of curated online shop – the saviour of urban tastemakers who are looking to spend for their lifestyle but only if they see unique value in the product. Known as curated commerce, this trend is helping newcomers and smaller designers develop a more distinctive brand voice while cultivating brand loyalty and increasing average order values and sales. At its core, curated commerce is about organizing customer segments around niche demographics (think 30-something high-income women) or self-identified style profiles (preppy cool) and offering a limited number of product options intended to appeal to those customers.
Ciceroni, Gujarat’s premier Fashion & Lifestyle Hyperlocal Discovery platform, recently forayed into curated e-commerce with the launch of ‘Pari-Sangam’ - its first curated online store. ‘Pari-Sangam’ featured a carefully selected mélange of 11+ labels in clothing, accessories and décor categories from across India. Since its inception in 2016, Ciceroni had gained a formidable reputation as the most sought after local shopping guide in Gujarat. Be it identifying emerging fashion and lifestyle labels or scouting trusted stores in the city, this content-led discovery site had been the go-to resource for fashion and lifestyle enthusiasts. With an engaged digital community of 1.2 lakh followers across social media platforms, Ciceroni aimed to ease the journey of a consumer from discovery to purchase by giving them a direct shopping option.
Portals like Ciceroni cater to the evolved aesthetics and sensibilities of urban millennials. True blue fashion and lifestyle conscious consumers are shifting their shopping experiences from giant retailers to smaller curated online sites in search of local, hand-crafted and unique products. Shopping through these sites is like entering a quaint well-curated boutique where everything is arranged tastefully and each product has a story to tell. It allows the users to make shopping decisions by giving them personal styling suggestions through “Shop the Look” concepts. It gives the consumer an opportunity to buy one off products that are recommended by evolved aesthetes while catering to their idea of being exclusive.
In fact, Curated commerce is often compared to an online form of personal shopping. Most of us do not have the time or resources to hire a personal stylist, but if we did we would expect that person to understand our lifestyle and taste preferences; the latest fashion or product trends; and have access to designers and boutiques we don’t usually shop from. We would want our personal shopper to bring us products that they think we might like, rather than overwhelm us with too many choices. And, we would also want to know why we should love a particular product—is there a story behind this particular item or designer? We would also want to know whether the people whose opinions we trust love these products, too.
“When we started off, we realized that most buyers were suffering from brand coma while browsing through e-commerce sites and yet due to lack of information on local brands, they would go back to buying from high street brands and big retailers. Vocal for Local has been the underlying philosophy of Ciceroni right from its inception. We shed light on artisanal labels that were handcrafted and slow in their approach and consumers found an alternative platform that provided them options. It was a win-win situation for both brands and consumers. Our Curated E-commerce foray is just one step further to facilitate buying from these meticulously curated designers and labels” comments Ms. Neha Sheth, Founder & CEO – Ciceroni on why is curated e-commerce the way forward for retailers.
Whether retail e-commerce giant will subset their offerings through guest curated online stores within their sites or not is something to be seen going forward. Retailers and consumers both are benefitted by this curated online shopping model as there is attention to detail and not scale. In the world of multiple choices, shoppers will seek the one that gives them the best within limited offerings.
