Festive season pricing not a race to the bottom: Libas’ Nisha Khatri

Khatri notes that, unlike traditional ethnic wear brands, Libas does not produce seasonal collections. Instead, its ultra-fast model involves launching a new campaign every month.

Edited excerpts:

How are you thinking about marketing this festive and wedding season? Will it be big for you at Libas?

We don’t really view the wedding and festive season as a peak season for us. This is the time for us to build lifetime value with our customers. We’re collecting more data and tracking customer intent much earlier, long before the festive season even begins. Unlike ethnic wear brands, we don’t produce spring-summer or seasonal collections. As an ultra-fast fashion brand, we launch a new campaign every month.

So, what are you aiming for during this festive season?

We aim to increase our customer acquisition rates by 30% through highly agile inventory planning. We are doubling down on localized marketing campaigns. Most importantly, we aim to shift from heavy discounting during the festive season to a strategic approach focused on retention. The festive pricing this year is not a race to the bottom. We have created a three-tiered pricing grid, ranging from low-priced capsules to higher-priced curated bundles for our loyal customer base. Already, the lifetime value of our loyal customers is twice that of other customers. Every price point at Libas is tied to customer acquisition outcomes.

You recently debuted on quick commerce platforms, a channel where marketing expenditure is also rising. What does an apparel brand like yours do on this channel?

Festive shopping is no longer a single-channel play; it has become omnichannel. For example, we no longer buy Diwali clothes much in advance; life has become busy for all of us. We partnered with quick commerce to capture the traffic that comes to these platforms. This marks the beginning of apparel brands listing on quick commerce, resulting in a very high conversion rate for this category at present. Co-ord sets, for example, perform very well on quick commerce.

This year, we did an outdoor campaign with Zepto to announce our launch on the platform. Zepto is well known for its tongue-in-cheek humour and has a reputation for doing billboards very nicely. Online marketing is particularly cluttered, especially during the festive season. So, whatever you do offline, if you execute it well, it will catch attention very well online.

But isn’t quick commerce best for basics and everyday items?

Basic categories do well on quick commerce, but people are also becoming open to making higher-value transactions on quick commerce. We are witnessing a similar journey on this channel that played out in e-commerce several years ago. The transition to higher transactions will occur soon. People are already buying gold, air purifiers and iPhones on quick commerce. Besides, quick commerce is also scaling up rapidly in tier-II and tier-III towns.

Tell me more about how you’re bridging offline campaigns with your online marketing.

We create experiences for our customers, such as our flagship Purple Day Sale. So, our offline brand becomes strong, too. We have an IP (intellectual property) called Libas Circle, where we do a concert in our store, designed to create a sense of community. This is an experience that people can enjoy for absolutely free. We don’t believe in calling a celebrity for store launches. That said, we have done this in the past. But, our stores are for people, and we don’t want just celebrities and influencers to become a part of it. I want this to be for, by, and of the customers.

Currently, we are hosting free makeup pop-ups in collaboration with Nykaa for Karwa Chauth. We are offering shagun ki mehendi for just ₹1 across our stores in North India, as well as a couple in Bengaluru and Hyderabad. On Mother’s Day and Women’s Day, we collaborated with Ferns N Petals. So, we are always doing events.

So how do you tailor traditional festive season marketing messages for a younger, fashion-forward customer base?

Our social media currently has a ‘Roshni’ campaign underway. This is the first time we have done a campaign like this. In this campaign, we have celebrated women in their goddess energy. The central theme is that women are gentle but also fierce. The campaign is darker, more intense and, of course, the garments look stunning. The idea was to own our tradition and storytelling. We have these goddesses and their cultural relevance, so why not marry that with feminine energy? Understanding the modern Indian woman is our daily work.