Exclusively.com, the online marketplace for people who have a lot of money to spend on buying designer clothes, has been shut down by its parent Snapdeal. The marketplace was acquired by Snapdeal last year and was reportedly not seeing much of a traction.
While reports of the shut down had started coming early today, the website now itself displays a message, which reads “WE ARE CURRENTLY IN THE PROCESS OF INTEGRATING EXCLUSIVELY’S CATALOGUE INTO SNAPDEAL. THIS CATALOGUE WILL SOON BE AVAILABLE ON SNAPDEAL.COM.” This message wasn’t there till at least a few days back, when we checked.
Further, there is no option to buy, but just an option to check whether a specific product is available at your pincode. The customer care number, which I tried calling several times, says that “Services to this number are temporarily not available”. That makes the shut down, pretty much obvious.
The premium products from the portal will now be available under the umbrella brand of Snapdeal Fashion. Furthermore, the orders will be fulfilled by the company’s own logistics network. Snapdeal had acquired the premium and luxury fashion portal in February last year for an undisclosed sum.
Exclusively’s product platform included designer wear and products from top-notch Indian designers like Manish Malhotra, Tarun Tahiliani, Manish Arora, Anita Dongre, Rohit Bal, Gaurav Gupta, JJ Valaya, Ritu Kumar, Varun Bahl, Shivan & Narresh and Neeta Lulla.
While the company’s spokesperson has not specified that the company has shut down operations of Exclusively.com, but said that the integration has been completed. In an response to ETTech, Snapdeal spokesperson said:
At Snapdeal, we are in the process of executing a massive build up for Snapdeal Fashion, with an investment outlay exceeding $100 million.
The homegrown eCommerce portal has been looking to streamline its fashion offering since quite some time as fashion is one of the top category in Indian eCommerce business. According to some reports, fashion and lifestyle category is touted to be the leading category by 2020, overtaking consumer electronics.
To get a strong foothold in the fashion segment, Snapdeal was planning to acquire the struggling fashion portal — Jabong.com. It was a front-runner for the acquisition of Jabong.com but lost the bid against Flipkart’s Myntra which acquired the fashion portal for $70 million.
Even though fashion is among the top-selling categories online, a report from Forrester Research suggests that the premium and luxury fashion goods account for less than 5% of the overall segment.
It will be interesting the see how Snapdeal takes on the established destinations for the fashion products. Currently, the India’s online fashion market is dominated by Flipkart and Amazon. After the acquisition of Jabong by Flipkart’s Myntra, the combined entity accounts for almost 70% of the online fashion market.
Last week, Myntra introduced two more international brands – TOMS and Meters/bonwe in India, exclusively on its portal. It houses over 30+ top global brands, including Dorothy Perkins, Tom Tailor, G Star Raw, Bugatti Shoes, The North Face, Forever 21, among others. Myntra has also recently acquired a majority stake in Hrithik Roshan’s lifestyle clothing brand HRX.
According to the report from Forrester Research, the online apparel, footwear and accessories category is expected to cross $5 billion in sales in the current year.
