Coronavirus has taken a toll on all the businesses in India, especially the retailers. Hence the retailers have taken to retail trucks. The fashion on wheels concept has caught the fancy of Indian retailers, who are taking a bus around societies in India’s top cities in the hope of making a sale.
Levi’s jeans’ is currently experimenting with the concept in Delhi and Gurugram but hopes to scale it up to multiple cities.
“Our main motive is to ensure that our consumers feel safe and comfortable while shopping at Levi’s®. We have tops, shorts, and lightweight comfortable denim led “work from home ” collection for this store concept.
Our consumers can try out the garments at their homes and for alterations the team on the ground takes measurements and the final product, after being modified at the nearest store, is dropped back to the customer,” Sanjeev Mohanty, managing director of Levi’s told Business Insider.
Max Fashion too has taken the shop on wheels route to garner customer attention, in Mumbai. Earlier grocery stores and bookstores had also turned to a similar shop on wheels approach to reach the customer, during the lockdown in May.
But the shop on wheels concept is not new. While it has existed globally for a long time now, in India it is yet to take off. In January, try and buy fashion rental startup Stage3 had launched its ‘Fashion on Wheels’ bus which went around different spots in the national capital trying to sell the concept of rental fashion.
Calling it India’s first Fashion Mobile, the vehicle had a walk-in closet that allowed customers to ‘Touch, See, and Rent’ their preferred outfits.
The problem of getting the customers to the store still persisted even after the malls reopened across India on June 8. They have been try different ways and means – how do they get the customers to the stores.
Due to the coronavirus pandemic, customers have been staying away from retail stores and malls.
Moreover, with the second phase of lockdowns across many states in India, retailers who were hopeful for a recovery after the lockdown until June are once again skeptical.