[Podcast]Mystifying Impact Of COVID-19 On The Fashion Retail Industry
A candid chat with Abhishek Shetty, CMO, Celio India recorded by WebEngage.
As we all know that COVID-19 has massively impacted mega world economies, it has not spared the fashion retail industry as well.
Without further ado, here are a few excerpts from our conversation with Abhishek Shetty — CMO and Head of eCommerce & Omni-channel sales of Celio, India. Being an alumnus of ISB Hyderabad, Abhishek has 11+ years of experience in the Sales and Marketing domain and has earned a name for himself, creating successful work-stories. He is also an advisor to early-stage start-ups, helping them scale and acquire users.
What impact of COVID have you witnessed on fashion and offline retail?
Abhishek: The sector is hit extremely hard. There seems to be a drastic decrease in demand. And whatever demand there is, it cannot be fulfilled. Search trend data shows a 50–70% drop in fashion search volumes.
→ User engagement is something where we are working on actively when the sales are going down.
What is the long term impact do you foresee in terms of consumer behavior in the fashion industry?
Social distancing has highlighted the importance of digital channels at a quick rate and the lockdown has also elevated an urgent priority across the value to be more digitally active.
→ Digital Escalation — Consumers will demand more on this front and businesses should prepare to deliver better.
→ Revenge Buying — There is a parallel school of thought with an entirely new concept of ‘Revenge Buying’ leading to a pent up demand. We have started operationalizing the website to handle the pre-orders. It will be a short term phase but eventually, it will drop to 70–80% than it was before COVID.
