E-retailers focus on opening physical stores

For the country’s top online furniture and fashion retailers, offline is the mantra for next year as several of them look to become IPO ready in 2-3 years.  Companies such as furniture seller Pepperfry, fashion store Myntra, and baby products retailer FirstCry are investing heavily in setting up physical stores to fuel their next phase of growth. Category leaders in niche ecommerce have been steadily building robust offline sales channels in the past 18 months to onboard more customers and, according to several of them, the hybrid strategy is beginning to bear fruit. Pepperfry’s 23 physical stores contribute 20 percent to its overall sales and have helped pare losses significantly. Flipkart-owned Myntra, the market leader in online fashion, has established several physical stores to sell its own brands as well as partner brands such as the Barcelona-based Mango. The trend is an added business opportunity for the signage companies handling in-store branding and graphic projects.