Flipkart Fashion Announces Divastri, Its First Private Label, Offering Ethnic Wear for Women

Flipkart Fashion has announced the launch of its first private fashion label, called Divastri. The new label is a fashion line of ethnic wear for women. According to the company, Flipkart Fashion identified shopper trends over the last couple of months to conceptualise and design its first private fashion line.

"Over the years Flipkart Fashion has witnessed tremendous growth both in terms of sales and meeting customer needs," says Rishi Vasudev, head, Flipkart Fashion. "Keeping the momentum going, with our first private label launch Divastri - we aim to meet the rising demand for celebrity and bollywood inspired looks amongst our growing women customer base."

"The new label is yet another commitment of Flipkart Fashion to offer customers high-quality products with superlative shopping experience at an affordable range," Vasudev adds. Flipkart Fashion says that it has partnered with global agencies to ensure quality control, with testing of the fabric being used.

Flipkart Fashion is part of a larger Flipkart umbrella, which includes Myntra (acquired by Flipkart in 2014) and Jabong (acquired last year, by Myntra). Together, these account for 70 percent of the online apparel market, though all operate independently for now.

Although this is Flipkart Fashion's first apparel label, it's worth noting that Flipkart has taken this route with other products in the past. In December last year, Flipkart also launched SmartBuy, a private label for electronics, similar to Amazon Basics. Earlier, Flipkart launched it's own home appliances and personal healthcare brand, called Citron. Flipkart also has a brand called Flippd in the apparel space, and Digiflip was its consumer electronics brand.

Sources tell Gadgets 360 Flipkart plans to add private labels for categories such as home appliances, grooming, and furniture.

The reason why the e-commerce companies invest in private labels is two-fold. For one, it gives them more control over the inventory, but also, the margins are much better when they own the brand making the products. It's also a strong income stream. For example, Flipkart-owned Myntra told Gadgets 360 in March that the Roadster private label contributed Rs. 600 crore in sales. Myntra already has 14 private labels, that together account for 21 percent of its revenue, so it's no surprise that Flipkart Fashion would follow a similar strategy.