Myntra, an online marketplace for personalized merchandise (covered previously here) has been around for a few months now; recently they had their official launch (actually on Feb 14th, Valentines Day). The website lets users create their own customised product (like T-shirts, Calendars, mugs, watches, gifts etc) using their own photographs, designs, text captions, or by picking from its large database of ready-made designs. It also works like a marketplace for designers, where people can simply upload their designs and earn a royalty every time their design sells. This looks like a fairly novel business model and the site is doing quite well. Revenues are growing at 30% a month and they are targeting $1 million in 2008. The site has content from 1000 designers , with over 10,000 designs published to date. They have raised seed investment from Erasmic Venture Funds and some angel investors.
Their main user segment is young adults, wanting to express their opinions in a creative way. T-shirts with wacky slogans for closely knit groups of people (friends or colleagues working together) seems to be a hot selling item. The website does give the impression of throbbing activity.
As I had mentioned in my earlier post, one HUGE business opportunity in this segment is corporate gifts and marketing collaterals. Most marketing oriented companies spend tons of money on consumer promotions, where branded merchandise and giveaways are the order of the day. This need is typically catered to by local gifting vendors, who procure these items from their respective local wholesalers (or manufacturers), and deliver them to the marketing teams. An online marketplace for marketers where they can buy good quality, customisable merchandise can prove to be a killer proposition.
Isn’t this a copy of Cafepress in the US? Don’t know how many people would be willing to purchase such products in India. The site looks pretty rich though, let’s see how they ramp up.
You can see similar site stardoll but here let you know one more site http://oxyshopping.com
Shopping search for India and vendor can submit their product free, just visit http://www.oxyshopping.com
Ashish,
I guess this is like cafepress , but I think there is a mass market here.
Hi,
Thanks for this article. I agree with the business opportunity for promotions. Also another big opportunity is reward points that most websites offer. Myntra gives them an opportunity to actually en cash those points by buying customized merchandise. The merchandise could easily have the brand printed in small but visible font thus enabling them to increase their brand awareness.
I think people are looking at the total opportunity size very narrowly..there are a number of opportunities like this that exist.
And don’t forget the merchandise for the college crowd. Events, alumni network, section t-shirts and so on. Huge opportunity there. We got the merchandise for our campus events from Myntra this year. It lets us focus on our core activities instead of worrying about print quality, online payments, and delivery. Being completely hosted, our alumni could also get those sweatshirts and feel nostalgic. 😉
Myntra seems to be getting some good lead over its competitors like Webvastra, Pringoo, and X-tees. But a fixed margin percentage for the seller goes against it.
Once after a marketing class, we created a list of items that have a “badge value”. Things that people like to use to show association or belonging to a certain group. Things like keychains, paperweights, bumper stickers and so on. Our list ended up having more than 30 such items. Each one of them can serve as a revenue stream for Myntra and the likes. Myntra has only 15 as of now. 🙂 That’s another option for achieving growth.
Whatever u guys r talking about. There is a new site, http://www.kyayaar.com, posting real reviews by real people, catching up indian market now a days. The name is good. People handling this site do have nice experience. so will get in market. Because of its name, people do come on site, and write reviews here. thats just human nature.
Amit: Do you compare myntra’s performance and quality with their competitor? Have you tried competing websites? It would be nice to see your writing much balanced 😉
myntra offers a good variety and it has tie-ups with many established sites.