Top retailers like Levi’s, Reliance Brands roll out neighbourhood mobile stores

NEW DELHI: For consumers, who are not willing to visit a store, several of India’s top retailers, from Levi’s and Puma to Reliance Brands and Forever New, are bringing the store to their doorsteps. US denim giant Levi’s, for instance, has rolled out stores on wheels in the Capital and Gurgaon that park at upmarket residential localities.
Consumers can not only shop at these mobile stores but can go back to their homes for trials. “The response from consumers has exceeded all our expectations,” said Sanjeev Mohanty, MD, South Asia, Middle East and North Africa at Levi’s Strauss & Co. “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.” What about alterations? Mohanty said the team on the ground takes measurements and the final product, after being modified at the nearest store, is dropped back to the customer.

Similarly, womenswear apparel brand Forever New is sending its store staff to consumers’ homes with a wide portfolio of products. “Our client base prefers to keep things a bit discreet, so we have brought home shopping to them,” Dhruv Bogra, country manager at Forever New, India, South East Asia and Middle East, told TOI.

Reliance Brands, which sells several brands, including Brooks Brothers, Burberry, Jimmy Choo and Gas, has asked staff at its stores to showcase products to consumers through video calls with Zoom and MS Teams. German sportswear major Puma, too, has roped in technology-based platform Ace Turtle to roll out a two pronged approach to make things easy for shoppers.

At the store, shoppers will have the option of scanning the barcode on the product, pay online and walk out with it without having to interact with anyone.