Home products startup 10Club Homes plans to open about 30 brick-and-mortar stores in the next two years as part of the direct-to-consumer (D2C) brand’s strategy to spread its physical retailing network.
“Almost 75% of the market is in physical retailing and that is why it is important for us to have a robust physical presence,” said Kavitha Rao, Co-founder,10Club Homes.
10Club Homes sells about 1,000 stock-keeping units (SKUs) in “home and small things around the home” including products for gardens, kitchens, décor items, flowers, furnishings, and dining items among other household items.
“We, however, don’t do the furniture part,” said Rao. “By the middle of the next year, we will reach an SKU level of 1,500 and that is a good number to reach.”
Rao, a former chief commercial officer at IKEA India and a former managing director for retail at consultancy firm Accenture, said 10Club Homes is trying to Indianize its home products. “We add a lot of colours to our products that Indians love,” she said in a telephonic interview. Furthermore, its products are almost 95% sourced from within India.
10Club Homes, which is funded by Fireside Ventures and other US funds, initially sold its wares on Amazon, Flipkart, and other online marketplaces. Then in January, the company launched its webstore.
About four months ago, the start-up also rolled out its first physical store in Forum South Mall in Bengaluru. In the next fiscal year, the D2C brand plans to open 2-3 more stores in Bengaluru and then expand its network to 30 stores in the next 24 months in the top 10 Indian cities.
With the store rollouts, 10Club Homes said that offline stores will account for about half of the company’s total sales in the next three years compared to its online sales, which account for 95% of its business, at present.
Source: indiaretailing.com
