Furniture and home products marketplace and e-commerce portal Pepperfry launched its first studio on Guru Nanak Nagar road in the city as part of its offline expansion. It currently has more than 100 studios in over 50 cities in the country.
South India, which forms the biggest market for Pepperfry, alone, houses 35 studios across Bangalore, Chennai, Hyderabad, Mangalore, Kochi, Trivandrum, Kozhikode, Coimbatore, Visakhapatnam, Madurai, Kottayam, Kollam, Salem, Gulbarga, Trichy, Vellore, Secunderabad, Chittoor and now in Vijayawada
The Studio, which is launched in partnership with Saikr Retail Private Limited, is situated in a prime location at Guru Nanak Road in Vijayawada, spanning a carpet area of 1,500 sq.ft. It offers customers a first-hand experience of a curated range of furniture and décor, which is carefully selected from the differentiated portfolio of more than 1 lakh products available on Pepperfry’s website. These Studios provide the touch and feel experience for consumers to understand wood finishes and quality of these big-ticket items before purchasing them. It also houses design experts that offer complementary design consultancy thereby aiding consumers in creating their dream homes.
Building on their omni-channel network, in 2017, Pepperfry introduced a unique franchise model and in a very short span they launched 70 FOFO Studios across metros, Tier 2 and Tier 3 markets like Pathankot, Trivandrum, Patna, Bengaluru, Indore, Chennai, Guwahati and Coimbatore. For these Franchise Studios, Pepperfry decided to partner with the finest local entrepreneurs who are well versed with hyperlocal demand cycles and trends. The company revised this franchise model in 2020 to make it more lucrative for both existing and potential franchise partners. It now offers a reward structure wherein the franchise owners can benefit by earning commission of 15% (previous model: 10%) on each online transaction made via the franchise studio.
In June 2021, Pepperfry launched the Pepperfry Accelerator Program with an aim to establish over 200 Studios in one year. The objective of this newly crafted program is to exponentially expand Pepperfry’s offline footprint by adding one entrepreneur a day for the rest of the year. However, the big differentiator of the new program is the Capex required by franchise partners, which is around INR 15 lakhs – one-third as compared to the existing franchise program.
Both the models are based on 100% price parity and does not require the partner to hold product inventory, making it a mutually beneficial business association.
