Eight years ago, when we used to travel abroad in our earlier jobs, we would pick up a lot of things for our kids because the quality of products available abroad could be trusted and more so, because the choices for baby products in India were limited. L
The idea was very clear when we started off with FirstCry.com. Our focus was to bring easy access to quality baby and kids products for the parents. When we began, the market was unorganised, where customers did not have easy access to the world-class brands or even enough variety and good quality products. We not only provide great variety, but also monitor and assess the quality aspect for all brands on our portal. Parents in India do not have many options when it comes to high quality products for their kids. We as a baby care multi-brand leader aim at bridging this gap and fulfilling their demands and needs through our online and offline stores. We adhere to very strict quality checks before we list or accept goods in our warehouses. We have over 1200 international and domestic brands that we work with and we deal in more than 90,000 products for the customers to choose from.
Strategies to grow in Kids business
The kids’ retail market is massive and largely unorganised. Any sensible step taken to win over a customer works. A few strategies to grow you business:
= Staying relevant in the minds of customers is imperative.
= Creating customer experience: We have innovated to provide a 32 inch touch screen kiosk at our stores where parents themselves can order any product which is not available at store at that moment but available online. This gives parents a huge range of product to order from without not facing any barrier of buying online. We have a very strong delivery network which ensures timely delivery.
= Creating edge by incorporating novel strategies: Currently, we have started providing same day delivery in cities like Delhi, NCR, Mumbai, Bangalore, Chennai, Pune, Ahemadabad etc. We at FirstCry.com take pride in providing world-class customer service to over 14,000 pincodes nationwide. With our wide network, we provide Same day delivery in 801 pin codes and Next day Delivery in 1675 pin codes. Our customer base is quite loyal which comprises of young parents.
= Unique marketing mantra: We also have a very unique and interesting marketing initiative in the form of a FirstCry.com GiftBox for new mothers. It is a gift box full of helpful products like diapers, lotions, baby wipes, etc that are handed over to a new mother after she delivers. We signed up 7800+ hospitals, 50+ cities where parents receive a FirstCry.com GiftBox as a token of congratulations on the birth of their child. The program reaches out to 70,000+ new parents every month through these hospitals and plans to scale up to over one lakh. We have already reached to one million parents via this box. The program benefits all stakeholders, the brands get a chance to present themselves to the perfect potential customer and at the very start of their customer lifecycle, the hospitals are able to give a complimentary gift to their patrons and most importantly, the mothers who gain awareness of quality brands and receive informative literature.
With our new ad campaign, we aim to accelerate growth and take the brand to a much larger parent base. The company's main focus has been to enhance and simplify the buying of baby products for parents. Considering the exponential growth of the company we wanted our brand to also evolve at same pace. Thus, coming out with a television campaign seemed a right decision to take. This campaign will have a significant impact not only on the online customer base, but also on the customer walk in at franchise stores and even new franchisee inquiries. Currently, we have over 125 stores and will achieve the target of 200 stores by March 2016. Looking at the growth plans we target to open 400 stores by March 2017. Thus, the ad campaign fits in well with our growth plans.
Building ecosystem
Reiterating our promise of building an ecosystem for parents and moms, FirstCry.com, introduced one-of-its kind community website World of Moms. It provides every digital mom, a space of her own, where she finds everything she needs through her journey of motherhood. The website is based on the concept of 'Happy Mommying’- giving moms a space where they can enjoy motherhood, and share their experiences with like-minded moms!
We have been vigorously expanding on all platforms and will continue to grow more than 100% every year for many years ahead. FirstCry.com has grown to be the clear market leaders for baby product market in India. If you want to order for your baby's products, FirstCry.com has to be 'the ultimate destination'. Our focus will be on constant innovation, improvement and value addition to leverage the customer experience. The market, hitherto considered as a niche segment in the Indian perspective, is now ready for the metamorphism; into a highly potential and fully fledged industry.
(Supam Maheshwari, CEO and Founder of FirstCry.com, is an IIM Ahmedabad pass out and an engineer from Delhi College of Engineering. He started the company in the year 2010. Prior to launching FirstCry.com, Supam was the co-founder and CEO of Brainvisa Technologies, one of the largest e-Learning company and was associated with the company from 2000 to 2009. A first generation entrepreneur, whose zeal to do something on his own led him to open his own venture.)
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