Amazon Fashion bets on kids wear, launches dedicated online baby clothing store

The fashion unit of Amazon India, Amazon Fashion has entered into the segment which historically hasn’t scripted many success stories. Amazon Fashion today announced to launch a dedicated online baby clothing store.

The dedicated online store is selling apparels, shoes & accessories for baby girls and boys up to 2 years of age from both home-grown and international brands. The brands available on the platform include Mothercare, United Colours of Benetton, Gini & Jony and 612 League and the exclusive babyGAP line from GAP.

Arun Sirdeshmukh, Head of Amazon Fashion explains the idea behind the new fashion store for kids and said, “Kids wear has been one of the largest selling categories on Amazon Fashion.”

He added that the segment has witnessed a growth of 80 per cent in 2017 compared to the previous and interestingly, about 60 per cent of the sales was from Tier II and Tier III cities.

Reality out there

Amazon Fashion is not the first platform which is estimating the potential of the kidswear and sees a huge growth in it.

There are many studies which estimate apparel market in India of worth billions of dollars and contributed over 20 per cent of the market to kidswear.

According to a Technopak study, the Indian apparel market was worth $41 billion in 2013 and is expected to grow at a CAGR of 9 per cent to $102 billion in 2023. In 2013, kidswear, at $8.3 billion, alone contributed 20 per cent of India’s apparel market, but given its higher growth rate, this share is expected to increase to 22 per cent by 2023.

Despite the huge market potential, the kidswear-dedicated companies haven’t been able to crack the market.

The kidswear market in India has witnessed the emergence of brands such as Mothercare, Babyoye, FirstCry, Mom & Me, Burberry Kids, Armani Junior, Fendi Kids, and Gucci Kids, among others.

However, it also saw fast consolidation of the market when Mahindra Group acquired VC-backed baby products e-tailer Babyoye in 2015. A year later, FirstCry.com and Mahindra Retail (BabyOye) consolidated their business activities to create a dominant presence for themselves.

Besides, many retailers such as Lilliput Kidswear and Gini and Jony shut most of their stores over the past few years after suffering huge losses.

However, Amazon is the biggest of all the players mentioned above and has deep pocket to sustain in the segment even if it yields less business.