Remember Gossip Girl? That teen drama that gave a glimpse into the lives of New York’s super rich and famous, told from the point of view of an outsider looking in? Well, if you’re a fashion lover, it’s likely you followed Blair and Serena’s lives as much for their clothes, as for the drama it offered.
Like youngsters across the world and in India, Sahyujyah Shrinivas was taken in by the glitz and glamor of the show. Unlike most of them, the entrepreneur in her saw a business opportunity too.
“There was this one character in the show who didn’t have money to dress up, so she would buy clothes from stores, keep the tags on, and then return them after wearing,” Sahyujyah says, explaining how the idea for LibeRent came to her.
Unlike in the United States, stores in India do not refund shoppers money on returning items. They issue store credit. This effectively kills the point of buying stuff and returning them the next day (even with tags on), because the money is tied up.
The idea is to dress up middle class Indian women in fashion they are comfortable with.
On the other hand, most women don’t like repeating clothes, especially for important gatherings. Contrary to common perception, the pressures of “looking nice” are no less acute in smaller towns and cities, where neighbors freely critique each other’s appearance. Anecdotes of brides and their families going broke trying to afford an expensive trousseau for weddings abound across the country.
It is this gap between aspirations and affordability that Sahyujyah has decided to fill with her clothes rental startup, but is taking it beyond just weddings. The idea is to dress up the middle-class Indian woman in fashion that she is comfortable with. LibeRent (from ‘liberation’ and ‘renting’) started off in August 2014 as a Facebook page, and got its own website in June 2016. It rents everything from sarees to cocktail dresses, and allows trial options at home. Clients can also choose a “backup dress” in case of emergencies.
In February 2016, Abhishek More joined as a co-founder.
The company services 11 cities, and has filled in 10,000 rentals as of date. About 90 percent of those customers come back, Sahyujyah says.
“The target customer for LibeRent is a woman aged between 18-35, who works and maybe is just married, earns between US$7,500-US$22,000 a year. We aren’t targeting the rich, we are targeting the middle class,” Sahyujyah says.
Learning curve
When Sahyujya, a metallurgical engineer by training, decided to go it alone, she started off with tie-ups with established fashion designers and high-brow brands. Understandable, since her inspiration was Gossip Girl’s cutting-edge wardrobe.
She soon realized that, while middle-class India may lust after top designer brands, her customers didn’t necessarily want to spend her hard-earned money on buying one gown that she’ll likely wear only once. “It was getting very hard to make margins, and we were getting complaints about how the rental prices were too steep,” Sahyujyah says.
It is by listening to her customers that she decided to pivot to the “affordable fashion” model, tying up with up-and-coming fashion designers instead of established names. Sahyujya and team also went to learn the tricks of the trade from mom-and-pop shops across the country, which were already renting out wedding wear in various corners of the country.
“India has lots of such shops who have been doing this for years, but no one knows of them because they are unorganised,” Sahyujyah says. The other reason: traditionally, if one were wearing a rental outfit to a gathering, they won’t like to advertise the fact – further adding to the hush-hush aspect of the entire process.
By tying up with mid-tier boutiques and manufacturers, Sahyujyah turned the company around from seeing almost no margins to getting 40-50 percent on each transaction. The average transaction value is US$11, she adds.
Rental future
Photo credit: fyletto / 123RF.
While it is the only major player catering to the middle class per se, LibeRent isn’t – by far – the only company testing the rental fashion market. Rivals like Flyrobe and The Clothing Rental cater to a wealthier clientele.
There are about 50 million women living in smaller Indian towns and cities, by Sahyujyah’s estimates, with an average income of US$7500 a year. They spend about 18 percent of their salary on new clothes and accessories. That is the clientele LibeRent is depending on to boost growth.
Currently, the company offers three-hour delivery in Bangalore, and takes 12 hours to deliver in Mumbai, Pune, Hyderabad, and Chennai. Orders in Delhi and surrounding areas take 24 hours to fulfil.
Rental startups in general have seen some traction in the country, especially in the furniture business, but clothes rentals are yet to take off in a big way. Concerns regarding hygiene, quality, and fitting bother many, Sahyujyah says.
“That’s the challenge. We are trying to build a community where renting will be as safe and easy as borrowing a dress from a friend. But right now, it’s the blue ocean. All the companies that are doing this are currently just building a base, educating the customer,” Sahyujyah says.
This post Middle-class India loves Gossip Girl, but can’t afford high fashion. Here’s how she’s changing that. appeared first on Tech in Asia.