Ever wonder if the products you use in daily life can solve more than one purpose without compromising an inch on design? We are often bored to death with the static designs and single utility of our everyday products such as laptop bag for office use, cover/case that protects the phone, or chargers that only charges your phone or it could be a watchband that is aloof from your definition of fashion. The new slew of fashion statements has created cutthroat competition amongst the D2C players in India and abroad. The focus of curating a new range is no more dependent on only one aspect or purpose. The brands are introducing a line of products that can are aesthetically pleasing, ergonomically designed, fashion-forward, and can solve for multi-utility. Not only this, the brands are impending on Make in India products to sync up with the requirements and fashion tastes of the new trendsetters. FinancialExpress.com got in touch with Pankaj Garg, Co-founder and CEO, DailyObjects to check about the present state and future trends of lifetsyle accessories brand. Excerpts:
Usually, the brands witness an upsurge in the customer database and sales because of the festive season. What are your expectations for the upcoming festive season? Are you offering any discounts? How will upcoming sales by Amazon and Flipkart help you?
Festivals, we feel, are a great opportunity to reach out to our customers and connect with them on a more emotional level. We observe a 50%-70% increase in daily sales during our festive campaigns owing to the expansive choices, considered curations and tailor made experiences we offer to our customers, making us stand out. We also take great pride in saying that almost all of our website is giftable owing to smart and thoughtful designs that make for wonderful gifts. To facilitate the same, we introduce carefully curated elements to our user touchpoints with dedicated pages, detailed filtering technology, targeted push notifications, and thoughtfully curated gift bundle options on our website to offer the ultimate shopping experience.
This year we have launched a dedicated gifting page on our website and app and ‘the joy of gratitude’ gifting campaign to bring a comprehensive gifting experience to our customers where they can shop for specially curated Diwali bundles that include our best-sellers combined with scented candles and sweets or they can shop for gifts by personality, budget or just choose from our classic gift recommendations.
Our marque offerings such as tech kits, desk essentials, phone and laptop stand, organizers, wallets, hardcover notebooks, insulated flask, messenger bag, charging adapter and cable, wireless charging station, along with other premium products such as keychains, scented pillar candles, sumptuous cookies and brownies are part of these festive Diwali bundles. The Diwali bundles have been curated keeping in mind the relevant trends and high usability of the gifts. One can find gifting bundles for work from home set-ups, desk upgrade, worktime wellness, tech organization among others.
Also Read | Dhanteras shopping is not just gold and silver! Here’s what to buy this Dhanteras 2022 as per your Zodiac sign
We also recently launched a dedicated line of accessories exclusively for the newly launched iPhone 14, Apple Watch 8, SE and AirPods 2. It includes 6 different protective smartphone case styles available in over hundreds of different artworks, 10 different watch band styles including protective bumpers for the dial as well as genuine leather cases for Airpods Pro 2.
In addition to the gifting campaign, new launches, we are also offering upto 70% discount to our customers with exclusive freebies for customers purchasing above a certain amount. Overall, this year, we have allocated 20% of our annual advertising budget for our festive season marketing strategies including websites, apps, marketplaces, affiliate partners and corporates and we are expecting a 2 – 2.5X growth in terms of revenue and traffic both. Additionally, during Amazon and Flipkart sales, which come right at the beginning of the festive season every year, we register 3X growth in revenue during the peak sale days along with a lot of visibility for the brand and many new first-time buyers.
What are the trends in lifestyle accessories you have witnessed in the past year?
More than a necessity, online shopping now seems to have become the preferred mode for all kinds of shopping be it for essentials or non-essentials. Consumers are actively discovering new brands on the various social media platforms, looking for premium products, trust-worthy reviews and better bargains.
Accessories as a means of self-expression: The young population is really big on personal style as an expression of their own selves and they like to have more than one option in accessories to choose from. They are shopping for different styles of work and leisure wear bags, phone cases to match outfit, season or mood, watchbands for varying pursuits – indoor or outdoors, other stylish and protective accessories for laptop, eyewear, earbuds among others.
Versatile in function for new work-life dynamics: Post-covid, a new work life dynamics has come into play. Hybrid work culture or work while travelling have become the new norm. Accessories that aid this sort of a flexible lifestyle, marry function and utility with design and allow the users to express themselves with cleverly designed styles have become quite popular. Our in-house product designers factor this need of versatility, greater mobility and flexibility when designing for the new norm.
Focus on better organization and productivity: A lot of new age working professionals are adopting the clutter free, highly organised work desks and everyday carry options that give them more efficiency and productivity out of their work hours.
How are you promoting the idea of Make in India products?
We are a proud homegrown D2C brand. All our lifestyle offerings are designed and made in India and this is our way of contributing to the Make in India initiative. At present, over 1000+ craftsmen help us cater to the needs of over 2 million customers.
When we started, around 10 years ago, Pankaj and Saurav, our founders, realised a huge accessibility and affordability gap in the lifestyle products market in the country. At that time, there were only a handful of affluent consumers who could afford to import the best-designed lifestyle and tech accessories from outside India, which came at a premium price. While, on the other hand, accessories being sold in the Indian market were neither meeting the ‘need for good design’ nor the required quality standards.
Accessibility, reliable product quality, good design, affordability and expansive choices in everyday lifestyle products are the distinct set of problem areas that DailyObjects set out to solve for Indian market by being highly discoverable on all digital platforms, practicing affordable pricing and bringing a wide range of high quality product and design portfolio under one brand and platform.
In terms of promotion, just to quote an instance, for the launch of one of our recent Platform Collection for desk essentials, we released a series of videos featuring real-life, inspirational, new-age Indian professionals across the fields of Fashion, Psychology, Music and Civil Services who fought against all odds to become game changers in their domains. Like the Platform collection, the campaign echoed the magnificent story of these homegrown achievers. The campaign resonated extremely well with the homegrown Platform Collection which is 100% imagined, designed, and manufactured in India and was very well received by our audience.
Overall, what are the most preferred categories and products by the consumers?
Today’s consumers are big on design and function focused accessories, desk and tech solutions and fast & wireless charging options that contribute to a more efficient lifestyle. The consumers are more particular about organisation, self-improvement and productivity. And as a design and tech focused brand, DailyObjects is poised to offer highly relevant solutions to these contemporary woes of the consumers.
Tech Accessories: Many tech gadgets are launched in the festive season and people are looking for related accessories. Thus, tech accessories become one of the better performing categories during this season.
Products such as protective cases and sleeves for laptops, watch straps for smartwatches, tech organizing kits, office messenger bags, desk accessories such as desk mats, laptop, monitor or phone stand – are some of the best-selling products during this season.
Home Office Essentials: With the plethora of professionals adapting to changes in their Hybrid working styles, ‘Home Office Essentials’ has emerged as a favourite category in gifting. As a matter of fact, our home office category exhibited a 450% growth from Jan ’21 to June ’22. We see a huge potential for the same in both personal and corporate gifting segments.
What is the future of the D2C industry and how do you see DailyObjects’ positioning in the market?
The Indian D2C market is expected to grow by over 15 times from 2015 to 2025. It is anticipated that by 2025, the industry will grow threefold and reach the $100 billion mark. The Fashion and accessories market is expected to emerge as the largest D2C segment in the country by 2025 and will be worth a $43.2 billion market.* These statistics are indicative of the fact that the future of the D2C segment in India is promising. The pivot to digital, surge in online shopping, and businesses adopting the e-commerce route are the major reasons for this growth.
As far as DailyObjects is concerned, we are a digital-first brand. The brand has grown significantly ever since its inception and is now bracing for unprecedented growth ahead. We aim to cross 100 cr sales run rate by the end of this year and 5x growth in the next 3 years. All in all, our objective is to grow as a lifestyle tech D2C brand and be the leading player in this category at the global level in the times to come.
