Myntra sees towns lap up global fashion labels

The marketplace onboarded 25 international fashion labels and 50 foreign beauty brands in the past 12 months and now retails more than 400 foreign brands on the platform, said a top company executive.

Nearly 40% of the demand for international fashion labels is driven by shoppers in tier-II cities and beyond. Overall, Myntra sells more than 5,000 brands, including H&M, Levis, Louis Philippe, Mango, Forever 21, Urbanic, Biba, Nike, and Fossil.

“The Indian consumer is largely becoming a very globally influenced consumer. There is a lot of global inspiration that is also coming. That is something which we realized a few years back. We tried to get into that trend and really lead that trend for the Indian fashion customer,” Nandita Sinha, chief executive at Myntra, said in an interview.

The move also points to more recent aggression displayed by Indian retail houses in bringing global brands to the country to capitalize on the growing demand for branded apparel. Greater variety helps draw in more shoppers and capture consumers across price points. For instance, Myntra onboarded American retailer Macy’s by listing its private labels in the run-up to the festive season sales earlier this year. These include brands such as Alfani, a workwear brand for men and women, apart from men’s casual clothing line under Club Room. Myntra also lists Macy’s activewear brand Ideology and daily basics such as tank tops and track pants under the Karen Scott brand. More recently, UK’s Boohoo Group marked its foray into the Indian market with Myntra and will sell brands such as boohoo, Dorothy Perkins and Nasty Gal across categories like dresses, tops, bottoms, and footwear.

Myntra also launched Korean clothing brand 8Seconds, Priyanka Chopra’s hair-care brand Anomaly and Turkish clothing brand Trendyol. Some of these brands are also available in other online marketplaces such as Ajio, Nykaa and Tata Cliq.

Online retailer Nykaa recently added multi-brand shopping platform Revolve on its platform to offer premium clothing and accessories.

Myntra is looking to partner with popular brands from markets like Southeast Asia, the US, UK, South Korea and Turkey, the company said.

“Last year was a particularly interesting year for us because we launched 25 international brands in fashion and almost 50 in beauty. We’ve seen huge traction from our customers. International brands have grown 60% across the last two years. In fact, 40% of this demand is actually coming from tier-II cities, which means that consumers across the country are really waiting to adopt globally influenced trends,” she said.

However, most of these brands are largely present online, leaving a gap in the offline retail market. Sinha, however, said that an offline strategy is an outcome of how global brands choose to expand in the market. “I think those are calls we leave the brands to take and how they want to expand in the country,” she said.