Decoding D' Decor's business strategy with Sanjana Arora

D'Decor is expanding its manufacturing capacity and warehouse facilities as it gears up to cater to growing demand for curtains and blinds and “something very big.”

Although the furnishing company has an e-commerce strategy, Sanjana Arora, business head of D’Decor, said in an interview that she still believes customers prefer to touch and feel products before buying them. Edited excerpts:

What has D'Decor been up to these days?

We are expanding our manufacturing and robotic warehouse facilities. We are building about 2 lakh square feet of manufacturing capacity, which is about 50 percent more than our current one. We are also adding two new robotic warehouses with the latest technology.

We are introducing curtains of wider width, blinds for offices and for hotels as we are witnessing huge demand for them. There is going to be a commercial range of blinds also coming in. In April, you will see something very exciting, something very big, coming up from D’Decor, which is why we're expanding our facilities, and it's kind of more focused towards the conscious Indian consumer.

What are the key market trends and insights that you're noticing?

Before Covid, we used to generally see women of the house coming to make the decisions of furnishings, anything to do with fashion or anything to do with small interior changes… but post Covid, it is almost everyone who has now realised the importance of their home. We actually see a lot of male consumers coming in and deciding what they want for their homes. They've understood the importance of a home and coming back and living in a state of luxury as well.

Additionally, we see a lot of young consumers coming nowadays. Earlier, our age bracket used to be over the range of 40, but today we see a lot of newer younger couples in their 30s from both tier-one and tier-two cities.

We have also seen the change of seasons. Earlier, our season used to only revolve around Diwali. And earlier, Diwali and weddings would kind of coincide, which would make the October-November-Diwali-December season the main season. But now, because wedding seasons have changed, we even see a boom towards January-February and the monsoon months, which is when we used to see a decline. So the months have also changed. Consumers' spending capacity in different months has rotated, so now it's not only Diwali – even the first half of the year records purchases.

Where is the business coming from the most?

D’Decor is both an export and domestic company. We still see our largest demands from tier-one cities such as Bengaluru, New Delhi and Mumbai. Even in Pune, we see a lot of demand. Tier-two cities are also catching up. We are also expanding our dealer base more in tier-two cities now, so that's bringing about a trend for us as well. We do still see a lot of people coming into stores with their interior designers.

Could you share some details about the brand's premiumisation strategies?

At D’Decor, we call it aspirational luxury, so we have ranges for everyone. Our base rate could go from Rs 400 a meter to even Rs 2,500 a meter, so we cater to an audience that kind of requires all of it… whether it's textured fabric, plains, embroidered fabric, foil prints or whether it's shears, we have ranges for it all within our product basket.

We not only have curtains and upholstery, now we've even expanded to blinds to rugs to bedsheets to wallpapers to cushion covers, so everything that you need to do the interiors of your home we hope to have there for you.

How is the brand leveraging influencer marketing?

We believe our biggest influencers are our customers and a lot of our influencers within the industry are decision makers, whether it's architects or interior designers, so we try to be present around them, we try to interact with them one-on-one as much as we can. We do participate in a couple of exhibitions also that the interior designers and architects prefer to visit domestically. When it comes to Instagram marketing and use of influencers, that's a strategy we are going to see us come forward with this year.

Can you elaborate on the omni-channel and ecommerce strategies?

D’Decor is present in about 1,800 multi-brand outlets (B2B) throughout the country. Also in 2014, we introduced our B2C direct, which is our own stores, and in 2015 we took one step further and introduced our franchisee model. Today, D’Decor has a presence in about 1,900 to 2,000 stores with our main collections on board in tier-one and tier-two cities.

When it comes to our e-commerce strategy, we have our own platform, but I still believe people like coming and choosing and touching and feeling the product... We sell more of our cash-and-carry products which are our bedsheets, our cushion covers, our rugs. It's something that people can buy and see online.

We have our own website. We are also present on Amazon and Flipkart and other home decor websites that we are in the process of integrating with.