Chennai: Clothes continue to fascinate Indian e-shoppers more following better display options and wider choices.With customers getting used to standardised dress sizes, online apparel purchase has significantly gone up followed by fashion categories as shoes, watches and jewellery. Indian ethnic wear such as Anarkalis, sarees and lehengas were the top mo-st searched item online with the designer celebrity Manish Malhotra turning out to be a favourite in 2014, revealed search portal Junglee.com.
So much so, Manish’s popularity grew almost 12 times between January and November 2014, indicating customers’ penchant for fashionable and costly designer wear wh-en it comes to ethnic wear.E-commerce onslaught has widened the fashion awareness of the average Indian shopper which was evident from his marked preferences in specific categories. Interest in ‘Bollywood sarees’ grew more than 400 per cent while in the western wear category, jumpsuits saw the biggest growth.
The year 2014 marked the emergence of the 4F phenomenon where fashion, food, furniture and fitness attracted significant consumer interest, said Junglee’s online sh-opping search trends rep-ort 2014. “While 2012 was about electronics, appliances and books and 2013 was about the emergence of fashion, 2014 clearly marked the emergence of furniture, food as well as fitness, in addition to fashion, as categories that attracted immense customer interest,” said Mahendra Nerurkar, GM, Junglee.com. Interest in sports shoes showed the biggest growth proving the fact that young India is becoming increasingly fitness-conscious.
In the case of women, pumps and stilettos saw the biggest spike over 2013 a jump of nearly 2000 per cent this year. While furniture as sofas, wardr-obes and outdoor furniture also grew higher than the average. In sync with the rising awareness about fitness, gym and exercise items shot up in search trends. Searches for specific equipment such as elliptical, punching bags, crossfit equipment grew a huge 450 per cent by the year-end.
While furniture as sofas, beds, wardrobes and outdoor furniture also grew higher than the category average, food category was dominated by relatively uncommon items as green tea and olive oil in 2014. Averrring the trend, Siddarth, an IT professio-nal, said, “I bought two wardrobes and maximum dresses this year that I seem to have spent about Rs 60,000-Rs 70,000 on e-shopping alone.”
