Elitify overhauling product range to make luxury accessible in India: CEO Ritesh Srivastava

From being a discounted luxury website to becoming an exclusive portal in terms of the brand mix, categories, catalogue depth, and overall shopping experience, Elitify.com is overhauling its product range to make luxury accessible in India. CEO Ritesh Srivastava in a conversation with Moneycontrol speaks about the Indian market and its appetite for luxury.

Edited Excerpts:

Q. Discounts have been one of the key incentives of shopping online. If you are moving away from it, how to do plan to market and position your products?

A. One has to understand luxury is never on discount. It is about the purpose, price and pleasure of possessing a product. It is not possible for a retailer to give discounts on certain products. Take Louis Vuitton for example, they are known to burn their merchandise rather than offer them on discounts. We are moving away from that heavy discounted model to create a luxury destination by focusing on sophisticated, handpicked and curated merchandise from fashion capitals across the world.

Internationally, we are entering a good retail period. With July 4 around the corner, which will be followed by Thanksgiving, most brands will be on discount. We will definitely pass on those discounts to buyers, but not work on the heavily discounted model round the year model.

Q. Tell us about the brands you sell on your platform. Any new names you are planning to add?

A. We already have brands like Ralph Lauren, Hollister, Urban Outfitters, J. Crew, Under Armour, Armani Exchange, Michael Kors, Guess, Coach etc on board. This year we plan to introduce few India exclusive global brands like Banana Republic, Express Clothing, Lucky Brand, Loft, New York and Company, White House Black Market among others. We have a couple of brands especially beauty brands from Israel that will debut in India through us.

Q. When customers buy these luxury products what is the premium they pay?

A. By virtue of GST, custom duties and shipping costs, the price of a product goes up. If one goes to any luxury brand’s site and orders something, they will be billed for vat, shipping and the price would increase two-fold. Buying from us includes similar factors in terms of pricing.

Q. How do you plan to deal with fake products?

A. The best parameter to judge a product is to see it. Globally the fake model business may work on heavy discount. Whenever you see a 50%, 60% and sometimes up to 70% discount, you should know the product could be fake. We have gotten rid of all these discounts and one of our strategic pitches is everything we sell, we get directly from global stores.

Q. Which cities in India have the most buyers and what is their average spend?

A. Around 60%-65% of our clients come from metros. Delhi NCR ranks first and Mumbai and Pune are close second. There is also Bangalore and Kolkata followed by Tier II cities like Lucknow, Kanpur, Agra, Chandigarh, Kochi, Bhopal, Ahmedabad, Baroda and Trivandrum etc. The average order value is between Rs 9,000 to Rs 10,000.

Q. What are your fastest selling brands?

A. Our private label Knight and Bond sells well and apart from them, Coach, Michael Kors, Ralph Lauren, Hollister, Armani Exchange and Diesel are our top sellers.  The North American clothing brand True Religion is also picking up.

Q. Define the Indian consumer’s appetite for luxury.

A. We are in top three communities buying luxury after Americans and Chinese. Indian luxury buyers have three broad range -- the neo rich who are more into flaunting and those who like the product because they believe in the product. There is also the connoisseur, who buy any new launch from their favourite brand because they have to have it in their collection.

However, in India those who love to flaunt are leading the lot. If one cannot buy a Calvin Klein bag they will buy a wallet for Rs 7,000, but for sure they will buy the brand because they can afford it to one extent and they want to flaunt it.