June 17, 2014: At a time when most of the online retailers have shifted focus to electronics and gadgets, online retail giant eBay is going to focus more on fashion and lifestyle. This sharpening of focus on the fashion and lifestyle segment in India was communicated in a statement to PTI by eBay India Managing Director, Latif Nathani. He was quoted as saying “We have a razor sharp focus on fashion and lifestyle on our platform. One reason is that while a shopper will usually buy an electronic item or gadget once is a long time, say a year or so, those who purchase clothing and accessories would be doing this more frequently, like a month.”
eBay would be focusing on tier II and tier III cities where online shopping is gathering momentum and that too in the clothes and accessories segment. Nathani said that “To cater to the growing fashion-centric consumers across 4,306 cities, towns and villages in India, we have sharpened our focus on fashion by offering over 200,000 products across 1,000 fashion brands,” Recent research reports like the one that was brought out by TCS Gen Y 2013-14 Survey suggest that more and more youth are doing online shopping and this growth in consumption of fashion and lifestyle products is mainly because of the increase in women shoppers in the country. eBay has been getting 50 per cent of its business from tier II and III cities in India and eBay India Census 2012 had revealed that 41 per cent of its happens in the Lifestyle category. .
eBay has got over 500 regional brands like Pothy’s, Roopkashish etc besides popular brands like United Colors of Benetton, Biba and Puma.
