5 Ways To Grow Your Online Footwear Brand In India

With a significant change in the Indian lifestyle, the Indian footwear industry has evolved over the past decades. Today, India is the second largest global producer of footwear next to China. It contributes 13 percent to the overall footwear production globally. Apart from meeting its constant domestic demands, a lot of Indian online footwear brand are also exporting high-quality footwear across various categories. These include, sports shoes, moccasins, dress shoes, sandals, ballerinas, boots, and chappals.

As Statista mentions, the global footwear market in 2022 was USD 9,352 billion. And, it is predicted to grow at a 13.5% CAGR between 2022-2025.

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Seeing the tremendous growth potential of the Indian footwear industry, many foreign footwear brands have set foot in the country. Meanwhile, the pre-existing foreign brands have expanded in the last few years. For example, we have seen premium formal and sportswear brands like Burleigh, Magnanni, and Asics make an entry in the Indian market.

While these brands have penetrated the premium segment, brands like Skechers, Crocs, and Clarks have introduced a new assortment of products to appease the Indian taste. Adidas, an existing foreign brand, has shifted its focus to fashion brand Adidas Originals to offer more products in the premium category. However, Indian footwear brands are not far away. Bata is one of the oldest and leading footwear manufacturers in India. The brand was founded in 1931, and its manufacturing unit in Batanagar was also the first in India that received ISO: 9001 certifications. Today, Bata has over 1200 stores across the country.

Other well-known homegrown Indian footwear brands are Liberty, Paragon, Relaxo, Red Tape, Hitz, Lakhani, Khadims, Sreeleathers, etc. While the Indian footwear market is growing, it also means there’s a lot of competition.

If you’re all set to grow your online footwear brand in the Indian footwear industry, we have covered some top tips that will help you accelerate your growth.

While there’s a lot of potential to grow your online footwear brand in India, you need a solid strategy and products to cut through the competition. Offering deals and discounts is not enough; you need to create a niche. These five tips will surely help you to achieve your goal.

With the boom in eCommerce, brands are forced to pivot their marketing campaigns and focus on online marketing, where most consumers are exposed to new brands every day. If you want to make a mark in the online footwear market in India, there’s no way that you can do away from brand building. The goal of building a solid brand is to stay on top of the customer’s minds so that they think of you whenever they need to buy.

Here’s an example of how to do it well.

A Fortune 500 sneaker brand was once focusing on localizing its brand image to boost its sales in India. To do so, the brand needed to tweak its messaging to click with the young Indian audience. The brand spent time with its buyer persona to understand what appeals to them, studied their footwear closet, researched their category behavior, and examined their influencers and style references. Armed with this research data, the brand then tweaked its messaging and positioned itself as the footwear icon of young India.

As the digital landscape in India grows, more and more people prefer to buy from brands with an active presence on social channels. Data says that 49 percent of consumers in India buy items on social media.

So, if your footwear marketing strategies don’t include social media channels, it’s high time to do so! However, you need to research enough to determine where your target audience spends maximum time. For example, most Facebook users are over 35, while Instagram has a more young crowd below 35. Pinterest has a wider user range of users under 45. You should also consider the demographics of your target audience before narrowing down on social channels where you want to focus your efforts.

For example, Bata, one of the oldest footwear retailers in India, has a strong social media presence. As of 2023, Bata has 8.9 Million followers on Facebook, 207K followers on Instagram, and 15.4K on Twitter.

Recent data from Baymard Institute shows that the average cart abandonment rate is just under 70 percent. This means that 7 out of 10 shoppers don’t close their transactions. This can be worrisome for any eCommerce owner, and footwear brands are no different. To improve this number, footwear companies need to optimise their checkout process.

For example, including auto-fill of fields like email, name, delivery address, phone numbers, and payment modes can make the transaction fast and easy for the customer. Customers save time by not repeatedly filling in the same data every time they need to make a purchase – a win-win for both.

This is where leveraging one-click checkout or optimized checkout solutions like GoKwik comes into play. It integrates seamlessly with popular payment gateways as well, bringing together all key elements of an eCommerce checkout onto one interactive screen.

India has the most WhatsApp users, and as Statista mentions, the user base in India is projected to reach 795.67 million by 2025. So many D2C brands are now reaching out to their customers through WhatsApp instead of the traditional way of sending promotional emails that often land in the Spam box or Trash folder.

With WhatsApp for business, you can create a WhatsApp catalog where you can showcase your product offerings, chat with your customers, take orders, and deliver. You can also get your customers subscribed to your WhatsApp account, where you can broadcast exciting deals and coupon codes. Here’s how Bata does it on its WhatsApp shop.

Kwik Engage, a GoKwik-powered WhatsApp solution allows you to build and embed personalised catalogues, run marketing campaigns, engage with audience, and even address queries, while helping brands increase retention, reduce abandonments, and supercharge growth.

Customer retention is seven times cheaper than customer acquisition for D2C brands. So focus more on retaining old customers by nurturing and engaging with them so that you can upsell and cross-sell to them.

For example, when you receive customer data, use them to understand their buying trend and behaviour. Leverage these data for targeted campaigning like sending personalised product recommendations on WhatsApp, offering discounts on their special days, etc. Here’s an example from a quirky footwear brand that does it well in India. Take a look.