In India, spotting a high-end store like Zara or Victoria’s Secret is a rarity. Outlets of high-end labels are often confined to metropolitan cities and the rest of the population does not have access to high-end fashion. Realizing this, Shivani and Tanvi started the fashion venture, ‘FabAlley’ that allows everyone to access global fashion trends at thrifty prices.
Co-Founder Shivani Poddar was a former Investment Banker at Avendus Capital while Tanvi Malik, has former brand management experience for the Fashion and Sports categories at Titan Industries Limited.
Back in 2012, both the young women felt that India no access to global fashion trends at affordable prices. They wanted to eliminate this need-gap felt by women in their 20’s like them across India with FabAlley. FabAlley started out as an online accessories store in 2012 which sold a highly curated collection of quirky jewelry, bags, and shoes. Quickly, they had plans to expand their business and started including apparel on their website in early 2013. In just three years, the brand has grown to become a legit style source for fashion-forward apparel and accessories. When launched, the company got around 1,000 visitors a day, and now it gets between 20,000-40,000 visitors a day on average.
As an online brand, FabAlley has milked free social media platforms for its promotion and marketing activity. Majority of FabAlley’s marketing has been done through Facebook and Google. In addition to social media, Shivani and Tanvi also promote the company through PR agencies and magazines like Cosmopolitan and Grazia. Fashion bloggers are also an important part of FabAlley’s marketing mesh.
“We work with a lot of fashion bloggers like High Heels Confidential, POPxo – who have a good following. So we do contests with them, advertise with them. Utilizing the social media platform like Facebook worked great for the brand FabAlley and as of now, the brand has almost 3 lacs fan followers. The company is working tight over Twitter to increase their user engagement which currently holds a count of 1800+ followers” says Shivani.
In addition, the site also offers a fashion blog, which provides fashion bytes, trend reports, style tips and street style beats, and fashion quiz as well. Soon, FabAlley plans to rebrand and re-launch its fashion blog which will have a more interactive interface and covers fashion topics on a deeper level.
“One of our USPs is our trend-centric product; hence our design process starts from identifying key trends for the upcoming season. Our designers scour the runways and streets for the next big trends. Simultaneously, we identify the categories or need-gaps and price points we need to populate as per our sales analysis.” says Tanvi.
FabAlley.com has raised an undisclosed amount in seed funding from Indian Angel Network (IAN), a national network of angel investors that invest in startups and early-stage ventures.
Currently, clothing comprises of more than 85% of FabAlley’s revenue with more than 500 new Stock Keeping Units introduced every month. They now employ over 100 young fashion enthusiasts across India and have more than 2000 styles within Clothing alone and another 500 in Accessories. The company has more than one lakh registered members on their website. So if you are looking for some cool outfit ideas or wish to buy some trendy clothes right now, head to www.faballey.com and let us know how you feel in the comments below!
