Top Trends that Will Drive the Indian Footwear Industry in 2022

Shalmoli Sarkar — Wed, 05 Jan 2022 08:30:12 +0000

The pandemic has laid a rough patch for businesses with the Indian footwear industry not being an exception. With closed offices, schools, and colleges due to the lockdown, the demand for footwear has been severely impacted in the first half of 2021 that has contracted the overall revenues by 21 percent according to Crisil.

However, after many contractions in sales, the sector is expected to witness some green shoots in the year 2022 with 23-25 percent revenue growth and sales estimated to reach up to Rs 70,000 but operating profitability to contract by 1.50 -1.75 percent due to high raw material prices.

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According to Crisil, the demand for footwear has been severely impacted in the first half of 2021 that has contracted the overall revenues by 21 percent.

Top trends in 2022 for the Indian footwear industry

Here are the trends that will be a fillip to the Indian footwear industry in 2022.

Let the toes shine: With new cases of Omicron rising and the possibility of a new third wave of covid, it might be possible that the outdoor movement is restricted. The preference for open or comfortable footwear such as sandals and slippers will increase.
Let us lead an active lifestyle: With gyms and sports activities on a halt, people have taken up running and jogging to maintain a healthy lifestyle. E-commerce platform Flipkart has witnessed a sales spike in athletic shoes upto 1.5 times compared to pre-covid times and a 20 percent increase in sales from July to August.
Push of Make in India: The government wants to make the Indian economy a self-reliant one and is emphasising local manufacturing under the ‘Make in India’ initiative. India’s footwear and leather industry is always an export-oriented one to further become the export hub, the government has announced a $364 million incentive package for the leather and footwear industry.
Going Omnichannel: Footwear brands are opting for omnichannel sales and bringing synchronisation across all sales channels to minimise operational complexities and cater to customer needs easily. Bata, whose digital channels earlier contributed 6-7 percent to its sales has rolled out Bata Chat Shop on WhatsApp that covers 600 of its stores across India where customers can chat with their neighbourhood stores to order products. For offline it had introduced ‘ Bata-on-Wheels’, a mobile shoe store to enhance its omnichannel presence.
Automation: Creating a pair of shoes requires tremendous manual labour especially in sewing and making the upper part of the shoe which takes a minimum of 18 months from forecast to delivery. As the third wave approaches, the government might again put restrictions that businesses need to operate with 50 percent capacity. By implementing automation in production, businesses can benefit from lesser manpower and match up with the demand and supply.

The Indian footwear industry in 2021 has suffered from lockdown, but with the increased pace of vaccination, likely, the organisations will again return to the conventional work-from-office that will again fuel the demand for footwear.

The post Top Trends that Will Drive the Indian Footwear Industry in 2022 appeared first on Dutch Uncles.

What should D2C startups look out at 2021 on the ecommerce front?

Shalmoli Sarkar — Mon, 01 Feb 2021 12:30:05 +0000

D2C Brands Are Leveraging Technology To Acquire Customers

As we draw curtains to the year 2020, we realise that in the tight lockdown period, ecommerce became a lifeline to both business and consumers to ensure a normal life. Amid these, many private brands have recognized the benefits of eliminating middlemen and have opted for D2C (Direct to Consumer) channel. In D2C, startups enjoy the autonomy of designing brand messages and get direct access to consumer data. In 2020, the ecommerce market has unlocked online shoppers from tier 2 and 3 cities. Hence, 2021 for D2C startups will be the year for retaining and precise targeting of online shoppers through technology.

Voice search

The D2C startups might be surprised, but there lies a huge potential of voice search marketing. Apart, from being search optimised through the keyboard, they should enable their products and website to be voice search-friendly. According to IDC (International Data Centre), voice-enabled devices and the ‘hearables’ market is growing at a healthy rate of 289%. India is a smartphone-friendly nation, that too with an android that has the mandatory feature of voice assistants in smartphones. If D2C brands are worried about buyers who do not own a smartphone, they will still have access to voice search since now a simple Jio feature phone running on KraiOS is equipped with voice technology. These phones are widely found in far-flung rural areas. When the online store is voice optimised, Google pushes the business up in the search engine to be uttered first by the voice assistant which improves visibility. People utter long-tail keywords while speaking than typing, this makes voice SEO a must for

Artificial Intelligence

With advanced machine learning algorithms, D2C brands can offer hyper-personalised shopping experience to customers. One such technique is collaborative filtering which collects data based on the past product buys of the customers who visit the online store. It suggests other shoppers based on others’ choices who bought that same product or showed interest. For instance a customer looking for a formal shirt might get a suggestion of buying a matching tie for the same, as others have bought the same.

Omnichannel

Omnichannel will be a combination of sales through offline and online channels. Customers now seek convenience of easy product availability be it offline or online. Through omnichannel strategy, business efficiency of D2C will increase as the inventory becomes available in both offline and online channels. That in turn gives shorter time to get the product, increase sales, reduce logistics cost, leverage the supply chain, quicker deliveries and better utilisation of inventory.

The post What should D2C startups look out at 2021 on the ecommerce front? appeared first on Dutch Uncles.

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