Myntra to further push for private labels on its portal

Myntra, the country’s largest online fashion retailer, plans to rope in more private label brands to reduce dependencies on frequent discounts. Additionally, the company aims to increase spending on technology and hold more full-price sale events. The company boasts of private brands such as Roadster, Dressberry and Anouk under its umbrella, and had recently bought a majority stake in HRX, a clothing and shoes brand launched by actor Hrithik Roshan, from Exceed Entertainment. Such private labels are expected to contribute ~30% of the overall sales in 2017.

Ananth Narayanan, CEO of Myntra, explained about the company’s strategy, and said that “Instead of increasing spending only on marketing and discounts, we have decided to invest more in technology and brands. These will help us build moats and improve the bottom line. We want to cap the contribution of private labels to a third of our overall business. We want to keep our identity as a multi-brand retailer and not turn into a private label business”.

The company is trying to move into the profitable green zone by the end of FY18, and trying to reduce the discounting festivals. It recently held a full-price sales event in April, a first-time experiment to test the shopping appetite of its customers when discounts aren’t on offer. However, the fashion etailer failed to meet its own target of generating up to Rs100 crore in gross sales for the three-day full-price sale event. It is planning to run such sales again after learning from the experience,