Trent expects 10% of sales from the new store within 4 years

Trent Ltd, the retail arm of the Tata Group, expects 10% of its sales to come from its new shopping website westside.com in the next four years, a top company executive said. Westside operates 169 stores in 88 cities, and large-format stores sell branded clothing, footwear and accessories, as well as home furnishings and decorations, mainly through their own brands.

Earlier, Tata Unistore, which runs the Tata CLiQ e-commerce platform, sold only Westside branded products, including clothing, footwear and homewares. However, late last year the retail network was spun off into a separate e-commerce site providing 14,000 PIN codes. P. Venkatesalu, Executive Director, Finance and Chief Financial Officer, Trent attributed this to the consumer shift towards online shopping, which gained momentum during India’s coronavirus lockdown.

“We have always had an online presence through TataCliq with the exclusive Westside online store. “The pandemic has only increased consumer sentiment towards online shopping, and .com is just an additional storefront where we wanted to improve the look and feel of the site and include a wider range of products, which was not possible with Cliq,” he said.

Venkatesalu said that while it’s too early to predict the standalone site’s performance, sales are growing 30% month over month.

“Since it is a standalone service, it is too early to talk about the evolution of sales, but we are optimistic. So far, apparel retail demand is trending in the right direction across all channels. Our conversions are higher than we expected and sales are growing at a rate of 30% month over month,” he said.

Venkatesalu said the retailer doesn’t expect shoppers to turn away from stores and move exclusively to digital shopping formats. Physical touch, feeling and the need for attacks will remain key factors in purchasing, he said. Online expansion will not impact the retailer’s future expansion plans. “We want to follow our customers and be available to them in every form of interaction with our brands. The development of our store continues uninterrupted,” he said.