After witnessing sluggish growth since its launch in 2012, online home furnishing retailer, Urban Ladder has now forayed into physical retail space with its maiden store in Bengaluru. Launched this Friday, the store serving as an experience centre is spread over an area of about 7,500 square feet.
Additionally, Urban Ladder is further considering to invest US $ 10-15 million in expanding its offline presence in Tier I & II cities in India. The home furnishing retailer has plans to open 15 physical stores with around 4,000-4,500 square feet formats across the country in the next two years.
The home décor brand will also bring in latest technologies to enhance their experience at its retail stores. Customers would be able to see how the products will actually look in real time through Virtual Reality (VR) and Augmented Reality (AR) gear technology.
“Experience at our stores will be distinctive on three fronts – Cohesive Catalogue Experience, Seamless Buying Process, and Inspiring Visual Merchandising,” said Kaustabh Chakraborty, Senior Vice President (Retail, Operations & Sourcing), Urban Ladder.
It appears that the e-home decor retailer, which gets most of its revenue from its online store, has been out with all guns blazing to mark its presence in the offline retail landscape. It has also unveiled its plans of selling products on third party market places as well. However, no revelation about the tie-ups has been made by the company so far.
Urban Ladder’s move is being attributed to a similar initiative by its immediate competition, Pepper Fry, which made its offline retail debut last year.
Through these investment and expansion strategies, Urban Ladders expects growth of about 25 per cent in the first year itself after incurring a loss of Rs. 154 crore on a revenue of Rs. 98 crore in 2016 fiscal.
