Pepperfry.com: Happy Furnishing

The furniture retail space is heating up in India. IKEA, the leading Swedish furniture retailer, will set up its first store in India (in Hyderabad), following a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) with the Telangana government. Meanwhile, furniture etailers in India have also upped their marketing efforts to reach more consumers.

The campaign has been conceptualised by Saatchi & Saatchi and consists of a theme film that highlights Pepperfry's value propositions of "Free Delivery and Assembly" and "100% Satisfaction or Money Back Assurance". The TVC will run across a bouquet of English Infotainment, Entertainment, Movies, and Lifestyle channels and select HD channels/properties for the next few weeks.

The marketing mix also features a sustained radio campaign, on-ground activation and outdoor promotions across top cities. The campaign is also alive on digital and social platforms like Google, YouTube and Facebook.

Too Late?

So far, the company has been investing on search, social and display marketing for building awareness and brand equity. The current campaign will help it attain extended reach. According to the company's consumer insights gained over the last two-and-a-half years, furniture shopping for consumers can be a tedious process. It is often beset with quality and service related problems. Discerning new-age Indian couples are therefore, looking for an alternative that helps them to buy the best for their homes without any hassles. The goal of this campaign is to introduce Pepperfry into the consumers' consideration set and establish its value and service proposition.

States Debarjyo Nandi, VP, L&K Saatchi & Saatchi, "Creating differentiation in the online shopping space is a huge challenge today, but what helped us was understanding Pepperfry's approach to furniture and consumers. This is beyond business, it becomes personal and this assurance coupled with features like free delivery and assembly is what will help consumers overcome mental barriers towards buying high-value items like furniture online."

The campaign is targeted largely towards double income households, especially those who are looking at a fresh set of furnishing for their homes. Vadapalli says that 60 per cent of Pepperfry's revenue comes from older households looking for new furniture and their media plan for this campaign is devised to target such households.

Taking on the offline Goliaths

Furnishings as an industry in India is a Rs 120 crore market and furniture sales contribute to 60 per cent of that market. In the furniture space, organised players contribute 3 per cent - the rest comes from the unorganised biggies. So being an online player, is Pepperfry trying to compete with the Goliaths?

Vadapalli feels that this is an opportunity for Pepperfry to become an organised online marketplace for the unorganised players. "We currently have more than 150 merchants on the website and out of these, 80 to 90 are city-based players like Neelkamal, whereas the rest are small carpenter shops. Pepperfry wants to be a destination hosting all small carpenters and organising them at one place," he adds.

Pepperfry is present in 127 cities and has dedicated professional delivery people in 30 cities who go and deliver the item. The merchant carries out the fitting operations. In the rest of the cities, Pepperfry delivers through courier companies and the buyer has to take care of the fitting operations.

Pepperfry offers over 65,000 products across categories like furniture, home decor, lamps and lighting, bath and body, kitchen, home appliances, housekeeping and pet supplies. Its competitors include Urbanladder and Fabfurnish. The company aims to reach a revenue of Rs 300 crore by December 2014.

Campaign trail

"Television tends to bring more credibility. TV advertising alone will not bring in the expected RoI, especially for a company that is two years old. Mass media advertising might be done more for brand building and spreading awareness or for establishing credibility. A good recall is proportional to a good media plan. However the TVC will strike a chord with the TG," adds Singh.

Singh further states that to drive numbers on the website, Pepperfry will need to do things like mall activation or initiatives on the digital media. "Below-the-line advertising can prove to be more sustainable as they can be done for a longer duration. It will also help in reaching out to the right target audience as compared to mass media advertising," he advises.

With additional inputs from Devesh Gupta.