Gurgaon-based online fashion portal Yepme plans to open 75-100 stores by the end of this financial year to bolster its offline presence, ETRetail.com has reported.
"Our stores will be combination of company-owned stores and franchisee stores," said Sandeep Sharma, cofounder of Yepme, which launched its first brick-and-mortar store in January this year. "Of these, about 15 will be operational by July."
Established in 2011, Yepme recently opened its fourth store in Galleria market in Gurgaon. The company is expanding through the omni-channel route with similar pricing strategies for offline and online.
According to Sharma, two of Yepme's Gurgaon stores have brought in five times the revenue that the company has got through online sales in the city, and the company is expecting an even higher growth from the stores by the end of this year.
Yepme is also evaluating brand licensing opportunities and looking forward to provide entry to international fashion brands in select categories to take on the competition and provide diverse options in different categories,
Yepme is clearly trying hard to shift focus from online to offline mainly because it now wants to be known as a pureplay fashion brand.
The makeover exercise may have been expedited because the brand believes that dotcom has led many to believe that it is a fashion apparel aggregator, which is not the case. (SH)
Fibre2Fashion News Desk – India