Reliance Brands, Puma, Levi's and Forever New, Rethink Retail For Customers

Reliance Brands, which is known for saving several premium and luxury brands such as Brooks Brothers, Burberry, Jimmy Choo and Gap has technologically equipped their staff to showcase their products to the customers virtually through skype, Zoom and MS Teams.

Their footsteps have been successfully followed by Puma, who roped in Turtle, an Australia based technology platform to technologically equip them to reach out to customers virtually and making things easy for them to maintain social distancing norms in this Covid-19 crisis situation.

For purchasers, who are not ready to visit a store, a few of India's top fashion retailers, from Levi's and Puma to Reliance Brands and Forever New, are carrying the store to their doorsteps.

US denim giant Levi's, for example, has turned out stores on wheels in Delhi and Gurgaon that park at upmarket residential regions.

Buyers can shop at these portable stores as well as can return to their homes for trials.

Sanjeev Mohanty, MD, South Asia, Middle East, and North Africa at Levi’s Strauss & Co, said, “The response from consumers has exceeded all our expectations.” He added, “We have tops, shorts and light weight comfortable denim led “work from home” collection for this store concept. We hope to scale this up quickly to multiple cities and markets.” About alteration of the garments, Mohanty said that there is a team on the ground who will take the final measurement and will modify the final product. The product will be modified at the nearest store and then it shall be dropped back to the customer’s place.

Likewise, womenswear clothing brand Forever New is sending its store staff to buyers' homes with a wide portfolio of products. Dhruv Bogra, country manager at Forever New, India, South East Asia and Middle East, illustrated that, “Our client base prefers to keep things a bit discreet, so we have brought home shopping to them.”

At the store, customers will have the choice of examining the barcode identification on the item, pay online and exit with it without contacting anybody.