Private fashion brands to grow significantly in 2018

By

Isabelle Crossley

Published
Jan 1, 2018

Private brands, which usually have higher profit margins for multi-brand retailers, promise to be a major focus for the Indian fashion market in 2018.

Private brands, in-house brands, and in-store fashion brands have long been seen as less fashion-forward and cheaper in quality than their counterparts from outside brands. However, 2017 saw many Indian fashion retailers, including e-commerce giants Flipkart and their fashion only subsidiary Myntra, not only launch an array of private brands, but also see these drive sales, as customers embraced them more than ever.

For Myntra, home to a selection of private labels, 2017 saw in-house labels really take off, drawing in customers with exclusive lines. One of Myntra’s private brands, Kook N Keech, had exclusive rights for clothing made for this winter’s Thor and Star Wars movies and released collections of fashion merchandise for each.

Roadster, another of Myntra’s private brands, experienced success to a degree that it contributed significantly to the platform’s growth this year. Roadster now has an annualised gross sales run rate of 650 crore rupees (approximately 97.7 million dollars) which makes it bigger than any other brand on Myntra’s platform.

In August, Voonik also began launching its own private fashion brands and, in December, Flipkart announced that private brands would be the driving force behind their 2018 growth, not just in their fashion section but across all of their product categories.

Large online retailers Amazon, Big Basket, and Nature’s Basket are all expecting private labels to account for a large percentage of their sales, with Big Basket expecting these sales to account for 40 percent of their total revenue for 2017/2018. Meanwhile, Nature’s Basket foresees a ten percent jump in private label revenue this year. As 2018 promises to be a year for private label fashion brands, more in-house brand launches are sure to follow.