FabAlley, an online fashion portal, is now looking to setup 10 new offline stores as the company is now eyeing to expand its operations. As a part of its expansion plan, the startup will setup new stores by the end of 2018.
With expansion in the offline space, the company is hoping to achieve about 25 percent of its total sales through offline channels. Recently, the company launched its first brick-and-mortar store in Bengaluru.
Shivani Poddar, chief executive officer of the company, said,
We would be opening 8-10 stores in the next one year and initially these are going to be in metros including NCR, Mumbai, Bengaluru, Hyderabad and Pune in the first phase.
There was a lot of customer feedback for the need of offline presence and we also realised that from a brand building point of view in terms of reaching tier 1 and tier 2 cities.
FabAlley was founded in 2012 and has so far raised $2.5 million in two rounds of funding. With expansion in eye-sight, the company is now looking for a next funding round by next year.
The company had last year tied up with the central departmental stores, which has a presence in about 50 shop-in-shop pan India.
Since a couple of years, more and more online startups are taking the route of setting up offline stores. The move comes in as the startups are looking to increase revenue with a new channel and get more new customers onboard.
The startups, which started out as an online-only platforms, and later setup offline stores include Zivame, LensKart, among others. Recently, Urban Ladder, the online furniture retailer, received single brand retail trade license from DIPP.