Rs 550 cr personal care marketplace Purplle to go omni-channel with private brand Good Vibes

Rs 550 crore beauty and personal care marketplace, Purplle.com, is all set to foray into offline distribution with its Rs 150 crore personal care brand, Good Vibes. Launched in 2018, Good Vibes along with Purplle's other private brands such as NY Bae contribute close to 40 per cent of the marketplace's revenue. Since the biggest chunk of Good Vibes sales comes from the East, the company intends to first roll out offline distribution in West Bengal.

While Good Vibes was initially sold only on Purplle, last year, it was rolled out on Amazon and Flipkart. Manish Taneja, Co-Founder and CEO, Purplle.com claims that the brand is among the highest selling personal care brands on Amazon and Flipkart. "Good Vibes has clearly transcended Purplle," he says.

However, Taneja says that they are going to be extremely cautious with their offline foray and won't hurriedly expand until they are doubly sure about demand. "As of now we are looking at a traditional distribution model, but we can't pre-emptively build depth as we don't know what challenges we will face." The company has hired a sales head for the East from Hindustan Unilever to take care of its brick-and-mortar sales and distribution.        

The beauty and personal care marketplace, also plans to launch its own stores this fiscal. It had dabbled with its own store way back in 2017 and had burnt its fingers. "We were in a mall which wasn't doing well, also the floor where our store was located, got the least footfalls. We lost lot of money and moreover those were early days of Purplle," explains Taneja. He says the big learning for Purplle has been to stay away from bad performing malls. "You can't go to a bad mall just because rentals are lower. Your cost of operations whether you are in a good or bad mall remain the same. Therefore, one needs to choose locations carefully."

Taneja is hoping to inch towards the Rs 1,000 crore revenue threshold by the end of FY22. The beauty and personal care marketplace recently raised $45 million from Verlinvest, Sequoia Capital India, Blume Ventures and JSW Ventures.     

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