100+ new styles every day
Established in 2015, Once Upon A Trunk is a one-stop-shop with almost 10,000+ curated brands and over 1 lakh products. The brand offers a comprehensive selection of apparel, jewellery, bags, footwear, etc for women and curates fresh collections weekly, coupled with personalised made to measure services. In a chat with Fibre2Fashion, Shivaani Jain, founder, Once upon a Trunk speaks about the merits of the platform, its growth story in the last 3 years and future product categories planned.
What was the inspiration behind founding of the brand?
The whole vision of the venture is to make designerwear available to the farthest of regions of India at an affordable price and to parallelly bring Indian homegrown designers and brands under one roof.
Which are the categories the brand is into? Which category sells the most?
Our platform caters to different categories ranging from womenswear, kidswear, footwear, accessories, jewelry, home decor, and beauty & wellness. Womenswear, especially Indi ensemble sells the most.
How many brands are stocked across each category?
We have 250+ brands under our belt with an 80:20 ratio in womenswear to other categories.
Who are your target audience?
Our target audience are women in 25-45yrs of age group in all shapes and sizes.
What are the price points for each product category?
We have an average selling price of Rs 1,500 to Rs 3,000 in our Indi category.
What is your retail and web presence like?
Right now, we have an e-commerce presence only, but before Covid, we did exhibitions across co-working spaces. We sell products through own website.
Are all your sellers exclusive to you?
25 per cent of the sellers are exclusive to the brand (around 50+ sellers). Rest 75 per cent of the sellers are not exclusive (around 150+ sellers).
What is the USP of your platform?
USP of our platform is affordable price, 100+ new styles updated every day, fast delivery, personalised customer support, and fast fashion designerwear.
Which are your major markets?
Metro cities of India.
What is your market positioning?
We are positioning ourselves as a premium platform offering a trunk full of little luxuries to the middle-class women of India at a pocket-friendly price.
What are the brand building steps you undertake?
We are focusing on providing seamless online shopping and personalised pre- and post-shopping journey to customers.
Which other product categories do you plan to move into future?
We have a roadmap to tap the activewear and the loungewear majorly.
What has been your growth story in the last three years (excluding 2020)?
We have successfully seen a customer growth of 150 per cent YOY and added 200+ designers. We provide to all verticals encompassing women's needs and cross needs. We have understood the customer psychology very well and we are known for our Indie catalogue.
What has been the impact of Covid in terms of sales, staff cutdown, rentals etc?
We observed a stagnant phase through later April and early May. With a slightly slow B2B (due to poor labour support) though gradually having overcome that phase, we are happy to be back in action and have seen a drastic customer reliability and inclination towards online shopping.
We observed 150 per cent growth in orders from Jan 2020 to till date. We are happy to share that we could retain our team as is.
If you are looking for vendors, what are the top 3 qualities you look for beyond the givens of quality, lead time, compliances etc?
- Fast on adding more styles to the catalogue
- Digitally more aware and active
- Balance of design and business sensibility
Sustainability and circularity are the buzz words today. How do you incorporate them into your product lines?
We majorly work with sellers who work with sustainable fabrics. We will be working on the customer packaging which is going to be sustainable.
