Online furniture – Dutch Uncles

Fabuliv: Winning Hearts with its Online Store of Furniture and Home Decor Products

Shalmoli Sarkar — Mon, 31 Jan 2022 09:24:27 +0000

A table, a chair, a bowl of fruit and violin; what else does a man need to be happy. – Albert Einstein

The words by the renowned German physicist cannot get anymore truer. A home is not just a place, but a feeling. After a tiring day, one returns to its happy place to comfortably sit on the beanbag, put on some light music, and merrily enjoy a cup of hot chocolate.

A piece of furniture is beyond a piece of wood and fur and is an embodiment of comfort that elevates the mood of an individual, which was well understood by Fabuliv- one of India’s most loved online home decor and furniture.

Fabuliv – India’s most loved online home decor and furniture store

Where most furniture brands in India had westernised modular furniture and decor Fabuliv drew its product offerings towards contemporary furniture. It offers handcrafted furniture and home décor products with a tilt towards traditional Indian design, suiting the modern users and breaking the monotony of the existing home decor and furnishing. Bored from the mundane corporate life, it was in 2015 when the entrepreneurial bug caught Ishita Singh, Sumit Rastogi, and Anurag Singh to start Fabuliv. One of the founders Ishita during her holiday in Spain was surprised when the tag of a beautiful decor item read ‘ Made in India’. What surprised her, even more, was when she realised that the products were hardly available in the Indian market and were available for exports. Ishita tried to bridge the gap by collaborating with various exporters and artisans who were initially reluctant to sell in the Indian market, but after a bit of struggle, Ishita and Sumit started their manufacturing unit to sell premium homes decor and furniture at affordable prices. Since 2015, Fabuliv carved out its niche in the furniture and home decor space by delivering elegance, style, and quality to thousands of homes by selling these online.

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Fabuliv offers handcrafted furniture and home décor products with a tilt towards traditional Indian design, suiting the modern users and breaking the monotony of the existing home decor and furnishing.

Selling stories of hardwork and creativity

Fabuliv through its online store and its dedicated team of artisans has built an expression of sophisticated lifestyle, where creativity and innovation are blended with luxury, and fine taste. Besides, selling furniture and home decor online, they also wanted to share stories of the artisans to give their customers a glimpse of the hard work and creativity that goes behind each piece that they sell. For this, Ishita and Sumit decided to take their brand online to increase their customers who can learn more about their products.

Fabuliv’s online store moment with Shopify

When Fabulive wanted to sell furniture and home decor online, they wanted to build their e-commerce store on a website builder platform that was undemanding of technical expertise since both the founders came from non-technical backgrounds. The founders did not want to invest in employing a separate IT department to get the site up and running. After experimenting and spending money on different platforms the duo zeroed their choice to Shopify to begin their online store. The plug-and-play apps or tools available on the Shopify app store made their website run easy.

How Shopify did wonders for Fabuliv

Purchasing furniture and home decor is through touch and feel experience. Therefore, while setting up an online store it is necessary to communicate the value of the products and highlight the unique story behind the products. Below are how Shopify helped Fabuliv.

A customised store for the shopper

Fabuliv decided that the first impression should be positive to communicate the most about their brand. Apart from just promoting deals and discounts, the site displayed its entire product range and processes while actively addressing the concerns that a consumer may have while browsing the store. With Shopify, Fabuliv was able to customise the look and feel of the home page easily and added multiple sections to the homepage so that the viewer’s attention can be triggered to the most important aspects.

For this, Fabuliv used a banner image on their homepage to showcase how their products are made mindfully and are robust. The homepage also added a new section to showcase covid -19 safety measures being followed cement shopper’s trust in purchasing furniture, by adding a quick banner addition.

Knowing us more

Conventionally, the focus of an online store owner goes into product pages, discounts, optimising the cart, and a smooth checkout page, often leading to a disconnect between the brand and the end consumer. On the ‘ About Us’ page Fabuliv shared the story behind the brand and showcased how are they different through their vision and mission and how can a consumer associate themselves with the brand.

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According to a report by The Furniture Market by Competition, Forecast & Opportunities, India’s Work From Home furniture market is speculated to grow from $2.22 billion in 2021 to $3.49 billion by 2026.

My furniture looks pretty in the space

The notion of ‘ images can be deceptive’ prevents several shoppers to shop online, which is why Fabuliv publishes user-generated content from the customer who posts pictures about how the products bought from the site have beautifully suited their place of dwelling. Along with these reviews, the section displays Instagram posts shared by the customers keeps visitors engaged, and develops the urge to explore more.

Hear about us from the media

People who newly bought a home want it to be decorated like the palace of their dreams. It has kept a separate page for features wherein the brand has been mentioned in the media. From online magazines to print magazines, startup news, etc the page consists of all the brand stories shared with the masses. This strengthened the trust of online shoppers regarding purchasing furniture and home decor online, also giving them an idea of how the brand Fabuliv could arrive at such a product concept and was inspired by whom.

A crisp description

Selling home decor and furniture online, which largely depends on touch and feel experience, can be difficult. Finer details of the furniture such as its dimensions, warranty period, product care instructions, weight, material, available colours are provided, playing an important role in the purchase decision. To reduce returns and avoid setting unrealistic expectations Fabuliv has focused on developing product pages with crisp descriptions.

In addition to this, the site also displays product recommendations on the page to help shoppers explore more items available in the store, thereby enhancing the shopping experience and building an impressive brand.

As people gradually get accustomed to working remotely, they have been trying to strike a work-life balance, drawing them to purchase smart furniture online. According to a report by The Furniture Market by Competition, Forecast & Opportunities, India’s Work From Home furniture market is speculated to grow from $2.22 billion in 2021 to $3.49 billion by 2026. Therefore, for online furniture brands, it is imperative to select a website platform like Shopify that provides a hassle-free experience of website building using its host of apps and plug-and-play features.

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Pepperfry’s IPO Launch – A Good Deal for Investors or Not?

Shalmoli Sarkar — Tue, 26 Oct 2021 08:36:24 +0000

Zomato’s launch of IPO in the Indian stock market, paved the path for several startups belonging to different business verticals to debut in it. There was an air of excitement in the Dalal Street since, the stock market this time welcomed an online food aggregator platform’s IPO launch, which was one of its kind.

Following Zomato’s suit, Pepperfry – an online furniture marketplace plans to file for an initial public offering (IPO) in June 2022, and complete the pre-IPO funding round by the end of this year.

Like many other businesses, the wrath of the subsequent lockdowns and pandemic was no stranger to Pepperfry. With most corporates adapting to a virtual workforce, it expected a bleak in its business but to its surprise, profits and sales began flowing with the recent virtual lifestyle making the furniture company inch closer to its IPO launch and unicorn dream.

The IPO dream and profitability in the pandemic

Any company to launch its IPO needs to give consistent profits. SEBI ( Securities and Exchange Board of India) expects companies to have a track record of profits distributed for three out of the immediately preceding five years.
The profitability of Pepperfry resulted due to an increased demand for chairs, laptop tables, study tables as the makeshift offices and schools at home began growing. Its chair sales grew by 250 percent y-o-y and study table sales grew by 400 percent in August 2020, thereby contributing 25 percent to its overall sales.

Also, the shift in consumer behaviour from offline to online purchases, resulted in Pepperfry’s online purchases locking profits upto 120 percent of pre-lockdown levels by Aug-Sept 2020. The online furniture marketplace also witnessed first-time buyers that were more in numbers than the repeat buyers from Tier-2 cities.

Besides furniture, consumers these days are spending a significant time indoors and are thereby demanding mattresses, cushions, and bean bags that deliver adequate comfort while resting, sleeping, and working. Catering to this new behaviour, Pepperfry launched its mattress brand Clouddio that began contributing around 35 percent to its overall business just after its 6-month launch.

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Pepperfry – an online furniture marketplace plans to file for an initial public offering (IPO) in June 2022, and complete the pre-IPO funding round by the end of this year.

The technology leverage and expansion plan of Pepperfry

Leveraging the AR and VR capabilities on its app and stores will be easing the shopping of furniture online for the new age customers by giving them an idea of how a product will look in their homes. After experiencing the products at the stores, customers can order online. Once customers can visualise the products using VR and benefit from it, will elevate their confidence in Pepperfry’s offerings thus driving its sales.
Moreover, Pepperfry is changing its approach to modular business by standardising the customer experience at its new modular centres in cities of Hyderabad, Bengaluru, and Mumbai, etc. The online furniture marketplace has plans to build 200 offline studios based on the FOFO model ( Franchise owned, franchise-operated) to penetrate into Tier-II and Tier-III cities in India.

Investing in Pepperfry’s IPO – a good deal for investors?

Whether investing in Pepperfry’s IPO will be lucrative or not is too early to say since the IPO is to be launched in June 2022. The company is largely focussing on growth and ramping up its offline presence by expanding its experiential stores in metros and smaller cities. The online furniture company registered a 26 percent increase in revenue to Rs 260.6 crore and has trimmed losses by 33 percent to Rs 122 crore in 2019-20. But, here investors need to take cognisance of the business vertical they are operating in.

Against the overall furniture sales that touched $700 million in 2019-20 the online furniture purchase had less than 3 percent share according to RedSeer Consulting. In addition to this, furniture purchase online is largely a metro consumer phenomenon and in India, it is largely an unorganised market, people yet like to purchase it from local carpenters. Although, Pepperfry has ambitious expansion plans to cover small Indian cities and can drive sales if hiring and employment increases since furniture is a non-essential category. There can be green shoots for the Pepperfry if offices again open up since India has now reached the 100 crore vaccination mark.

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