Founded in 2017, MyGlamm claims to be the fastest-growing direct-to-consumer (DTC) beauty brand in India with investors such as international firm L’Occitane Groupe.
The brand has over 600 SKUs spanning make-up, skin care and personal care and is available via an online website, a mobile application as well as 4,000 offline points of sales across 50 cities of India.
In 2019, the brand grew 400% on the back of the voracious demand for beauty and personal care products in India.
Sales continued to increase at the beginning of 2020, but revenue plunged to zero when the Indian government imposed a lockdown to curb the spread of the novel coronavirus (COVID-19) disease.
When businesses were allowed to resume operations in July, the firm saw sales quickly return to pre-COVID levels.
Founder and CEO Darpan Sanghvi attributed the recovery to the strength of its DTC model as well as digital tools such as the virtual try-on available on its mobile application.
The brand’s sales were also aided by the firm’s latest acquisition of PopXo, India’s largest content-platform.
“PopXo generates around two billion monthly impressions and we have inserted ourselves in 2.5% of that through advertising and native content. We also created a common loyalty programme between MyGlamm and PopXo called MyGlammXO, allowing consumers to earn points when they engage in the PopXo community which can be redeemed for products on MyGlamm,” Sanghvi explained.
With the additional sales boost from the festive season, the company has seen sales exceed its pre-COVID levels by 50% in four months.
“I’m happy to say that beauty is back in India. It has survived COVID-19 and is doing better than it did before the pandemic,” said Sanghvi.
An opportunity to scale up
Despite this, the firm recognises that the beauty consumer’s habits have shifted because of the pandemic, and that it needs to evolve along with it.
“I see this as a great opportunity to try and do things differently. In light of everything, I believe the answer is not to scale down but to in fact, scale up and take a gamble,” said Sangvhi.
The firm’s latest ‘gamble’ is the launch of its first standalone retail store, an experiential beauty concept store that bridges the gap between the physical and digital retail spaces.
The store, which claims to be six times larger than any beauty outlet in India, was design to be a ‘beauty playground’, with photo and video booths, make-up minibars, a lounge as well as a stage equipped with public broadcast capabilities.
“We’ve created a very interesting store experience. The physical space is so large, you can feel safely socially distanced. You can have a private shopping experience if you want, but you won’t be alone because you are connected digitally,” said Sangvhi.
For instance, he highlighted the store’s private content creation booths with photo and video capabilities that are linked to the Internet.
“You have all the make-up, a make-up artist should you need one, lighting… all the tools you need to create good photo and video content that you can seamlessly transmit to your social accounts. You can try on products, get feedback from your friends online before you decide to buy.”
Sangvhi continued: “This store allows you to create content, share content, see other people's content and learn from it. It’s really a private yet social experience.”
The firm believes it is essential for physical retail stores to actively attract shoppers with more experience-driven innovations.
“What you will see post-COVID is that people are going out less. To get them to step out, we got to blow them away and make the trip worth their while,” said Sangvhi.
Depending on the success of the store, the company hopes to expand the concept across India with smaller exclusive brand outlets (EBOs).
“We wanted this store to set the standard and use it to collect feedback from consumers. Based on the success of the store, we hope to have 50 to 70 of these experiential stores across India. We want to take these concepts and try to give the same experience in a smaller 700sqft store,” said Sangvhi.
