What made Flipkart open an offline retail store

NEW DELHI: A nudge from employees has opened up a fresh avenue of growth for e-commerce company Flipkart in the offline retail space, besides boosting internal pride in the brand.

A few months ago, Flipkart opened its first brick-and-mortar store called 'Fliptomania' in Bangalore after several employees called for company-branded products on 'sticker', or employee feedback walls.

Flipkart received repeated requests for company-branded T-shirts, coffee mugs and stationery. The Bangalore store is open to both employees and outside customers, and has witnessed heavy footfalls.

Encouraged by this, the company is planning more such stores at its offices in Delhi, Mumbai and Kolkata, besides unveiling its branded products on its website for its employees.

"Deliberately, these products come with a very nominal price tag just enough to cover the cost price," says Arathi Vedantham, director of internal communications, Flipkart. Vedantham, however, did not disclose the revenues or footfalls from the store.

"These products instill a sense of pride and belonging among employees. Quirky things like even laptop stickers are a huge hit," she said.

Some of the employee messages read, "Can we have more of Flipkart branded T-shirts. I want to gift these," added a company spokesperson. Outside customers contribute just 10% to the total store footfall.

Building its brand has a twofold effect on a company — it augments the market valuation and pumps up employee pride. "By owning a brand, in some cases, the market valuation of a company has risen by 1.6 or 1.8 times from its original valuation," says Harish Bijoor, brand expert and CEO, Harish Bijoor Co.

Bijoor cites the examples of soap companies like Marico and Chandrika, which started out by manufacturing soaps for other companies before selling them under their own brand. The companies, he says, became very successful after introducing their own branded soaps.

Flipkart is all set to ride its own success with the Bangalore store. It is now preparing to cater to the next employee request for a baby line of products. So serious is the company's involvement in this initiative that it has hired a young designer, Subin Kurian Verghese, for designing in-house products.

The company spokesperson claims it had never advertised its offline range of products, and that they were a hit among buyers from day one. The Bangalore store sells merchandise like T-shirts, jackets, stationery, apparels and laptop stickers under its brand
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