Apparels and accessories the most purchased products during festive sales: Ecom Express
- Apparels
gained huge traction with a 5.2% increase in share of total volumes, after
seeing a decline during COVID-19 phase. Footwear has been revived by the
October sales.
- Mobile,
tablets and mobile accessories received more space in the shopping cart at
the beginning of the festive sales and a steady growth thereafter.
- Medicines
& Supplements saw a 260% jump in volumes in August and sustained
higher volumes through October.
Ecom Express, a leading technology enabled end-to-end
logistics solutions provider to e-commerce industry, today revealed key
highlights of consumer buying pattern across fashion, mobiles and tablets, and
medicine categories in the ongoing festive sales. The data has been gathered
based on volumes of merchandise assigned to Ecom Express by more than 2000
e-commerce players in the country. The total jump in volume of sales for the
same duration in August versus October, including all categories, stood at 72%.
Apparels and accessories
were the most purchased categories of products in terms of volume share from
February to August. In the October sale, this segment saw around 5% increase in
share of total volumes and a whopping 200% + increase in growth over its
pre-COVID volumes.
According to the company, this growth was driven primarily
from major cities such as Bangalore, Chennai, Kolkata, Ahmedabad, and Mumbai.
Kolkata’s October sales numbers showed the highest spike, especially in apparel
and footwear, capturing on Durga Puja fervour. It reflects that people in
Kolkata waited for the festive season, and their preferred choice of gifts this
year were apparel, footwear, and accessories. Although Delhi saw a decline in
apparel volumes, adjoining cities in the NCR such as Gurgaon, Noida and
Ghaziabad contributed significantly to the volumes.
Further, mobile, tablets and mobile accessories
bounced back post-COVID to show an 89% growth in August. This category remains
a strong in a sale promotion-driven category, showing a huge surge during the
October festive sales grew by over 210%. While the large cities remain
the largest markets for this category overall, smaller cities appeared to drive
festive season sales, with customers/re-sellers waiting for sale promotions.
High volumes were driven out of small towns like Arrah and Narkatiyagunj
(Bihar), Raigarh and Sarangarh (Chhattisgarh) and Dhaka near Dumka district of
Jharkhand.
Medicine and supplements
including hygiene saw a very high growth attaining a 260% jump in August
compared to pre-COVID days. This purchasing pattern in medicine and supplements
was fuelled by the pandemic and its volumes have stayed consistently at the
August level in the October sale. Sales in this category was driven not just
out of metros and large cities, but also from tier-2 and tier-3 cities
including Bhopal, Patna, Agartala, Indore, Silchar, Kanpur etc.
Commenting on the insights, Siddharth Agarwal, Vice
President - Corporate Strategy and Planning, Ecom Express said, “We had
anticipated the surge in online shopping that was backed by festive sales and
increased preference for doorstep deliveries. Due to COVID-19, there has been a
rise in first-time online buyers. Moreover, even offline retailers and brands
are riding on the e-commerce wave to reach out to their audience which is why
we geared up to keep up with the demand, even from the remotest parts of the
country. Our reach to over 27000 PIN-codes is definitely proving to help people
even at faraway places to enjoy their festivity and give us an edge in
delivering last mile smiles.”
Interestingly, laptops and accessories, footwear, beauty
products and toiletries ruled the roost in February just before
COVID-19-induced lockdown. However, these products saw a decline in sales
volumes in August and continued their downward trend through October mainly due
to factors such as work from home (WFH), less offline meetings/public outings
amongst others. The Footwear segment still managed to revive in October sales
and its demand more than doubled in October.
In terms of categories, moderate growth in volumes were
also seen in Home Décor, kitchen and dining, and large appliances till August.
While home décor remained steady, others saw a moderate decline in the October
sales.
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