Does Fashion’s Style Fit the Lean Quick Commerce Body?

Devangshu Dutta

December 24, 2024

Opinion piece by Devangshu Dutta, published in TexFash.com
12 December 2024

TLDR:

The core premise of quick commerce is time-sensitive buying by the consumer, typically emergency purchases and top-ups of food and grocery, cleaning or personal care items. Although 10-minute delivery has been widely hyped, deliveries are usually—and more realistically—made in a time span of 20–60 minutes, which is often better than the cost and time involved in driving to nearby stores that are beyond walkable distance, in India’s crowded urban environment. 

While quick commerce platforms had already begun disrupting FMCG and grocery buying, impacting traditional kirana shops, recently they have also started adding fashion products to improve their margin mix and profitability. 

The Products that Fit Q-Com

The fashion business, by its very nature, is built on width of choice, frequency of change and unpredictability, whereas the quick commerce business model depends on a narrow, shallow merchandise mix which comprises products that are sold predictably, frequently and in large numbers within a small delivery radius. Stocking a variety of fashion styles, sizes, and colours is inherently more complex than handling products like soaps or spices.

Also, unlike FMCG or essential products, fashion items certainly depend on sensory experience of touch and feel. Shopping for clothing often requires browsing through a variety of styles, fabrics, and fits; consumers spend considerable time researching, comparing, and reading reviews to ensure the right fit, colour, and fabric. 

However, there is potential for basics (e.g. T-shirts in common colours, innerwear, socks, and hosiery), last-minute outfit changes, urgent replacement for damaged clothing, event-driven products, or specially promoted products that look like great deals, as all of these would fulfil immediate needs without the same level of evaluation and comparison. 

In contrast, fashion shopping for high-value items such as dresses, shirts, or outerwear will remain a slower, more deliberate process. The higher the emotional or experiential value attached to a product, the less quick commerce will fit.

M-Now – Myntra’s Quick Delivery Model

Myntra has announced its quick commerce launch offering 10,000 styles, across fashion, beauty, accessories and home, and expects to expand the offering to over 100,000 products in 3–4 months. 

I see Myntra’s entry into this space partly as a defensive move to fend off the quick commerce upstarts from cannibalising its business in a market that is already beset with damp offtake and highly discounted sales. Surely Myntra would not want to lose its customers who may looking to make repeat, impulse or emergency purchases of fashion products and may be less price sensitive while doing so. 

It’ll be interesting to see how they address the product complexity with super-quick deliveries, and how geographically spread this business model can be for Myntra. 

Myntra’s parent company Flipkart has already announced that it expects to IPO by 2025–26, and it needs to be seen as evolving and staying relevant in an increasingly competitive environment, rather than losing customers and business to younger q-commerce businesses.

Is this the New Version of “Fast Fashion”?

We shouldn’t confuse quick commerce with “fast fashion”. What is fast in quick commerce is the speed of decision making and shopping that is enabled by a limited choice, and fast deliveries.

The fast fashion model is built on the foundation of changing trends, which needs companies to quickly identify winning trends, get product ready to sell, and move out of trend so as not to be stuck with out-of-demand inventory. The fashion-conscious customer profile wants frequent and, most importantly, trendy changes to their wardrobe. Fast fashion is waste-inducing because it encourages discarding products that are out of trend, but otherwise perfectly fine. 

Quick commerce, on the other hand, needs to have a profitable business on a much narrower product profile. The more predictable and basic the product, the more it suits a Q-commerce business model. 

Sustaining the ability to make fashion-trend related changes to the product mix would be nightmarishly complex for quick commerce. 

I would expect quick commerce of fashion to be more driven by “need” than by “want”, and in that aspect to be, hopefully, less waste-inducing and perhaps less environmentally harmful than the established fast fashion business models and brands.

Quick commerce could also create an additional outlet for inventory that is stuck and feed into value-conscious customers’ requirements. 

Impact on Smaller Businesses

For small manufacturers, Myntra’s entry into the q-commerce space could be a double-edged sword. 

On one hand, quick commerce can create a new demand channel for them beyond modern retail, traditional stores and online marketplaces, offering growth in a tough market environment. 

However, it can also intensify the pressure on their already tight margins because of the consolidation of trade demand and a push by large customers such as Myntra to improve their own profitability. Suppliers may also be asked to hold inventory at their end ready for replenishment of the quick commerce dark stores, to ensure that service levels are maintained. 

This can increase pressure on production timelines and on working capital for small manufacturers, who would need to adapt quickly or risk being squeezed out by larger, more agile competitors.

On the competitive side, while larger retailers—whether traditional, family-owned department stores or large chains—are likely to be less affected, quick commerce of fashion products will certainly hit smaller fashion stores whose merchandise mix is limited in width and depth. These stores will necessarily need to define what is their continuing value proposition to the changing consumer. 

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