Desi Fabrics on a Global Pedestal: A True Tale of Digital Transformation

About Charu Creation Pvt. Ltd.

The history of Charu Creation can be traced back to the 1990s. Headquartered in New Delhi, India, this fabric hub was founded in the year 1993 with the aim to deliver a diverse range of quality fabrics to a global audience. Over the past three decades, it has established itself as the leading retailer, trader and exporter of fashion fabrics. It has over 21,000 SKUs in its export arsenal and has sold more than 1.5 billion meters of fabrics since its inception. Owned by Mr Tushar Bhatia, Charu Creation
boasts over 11,000 customers across 53 different nations.

The Missing Links

Until 2019, Charu Creation has successfully run its operations as a leading exporter and an established retail fabric brand. However, things started fumbling with the advent of the Global COVID-19 pandemic that forced nations to shut down. Like many other prominent brands, it lacked focus on creating and strengthening the digital sales infrastructure. As a result, it led to a significant decline in its topline and profits, just like many other traditional retail businesses.

The absence of a dynamic digital infrastructure to serve customers online resulted in little to no sales during the lockdown period. This, in turn, impacted all operational and non-operational business activities due to suboptimal cash flow. As a result, there was an eminent need to create a robust digital sales channel to assist online purchases. The main challenge was to deliver a great customer experience that was at par with the offline counterpart.

In addition to this, a dedicated digital marketing strategy was also required to boost traffic and increase online conversions. Since people were accustomed to purchasing fabrics offline, convincing them to buy the same online was a major hurdle. Another important goal was to increase sign-up from website visitors for in- store events and product demos. It required a unique digital strategy to establish trust among prospective customers and close sales.

Our Approach

After assessing Charu Creation’s prominent challenges and business objectives, we realised that it needed a complete digital transformation. It required a complete digital ecosystem to market and sell fabrics online. Traditionally, the business had been operating on a brick and store model, and most customers were accustomed to an offline experience. We aimed to create a digital platform that could replicate the same offline customer experience across all touchpoints.

The idea was to make customers indifferent about purchasing fabrics through all sales channels. We also focused on leveraging existing assets like the old customer database to understand the audience profile. It helped us develop a robust communication strategy for marketing products through email and other mediums. A powerful analytics dashboard was also set up to evaluate the performance of marketing strategies deployed and take necessary corrective measures.

Solution Methodology

Let’s take a deep dive into the tools and techniques deployed by Deep Focus to help Charu Creation grow its online presence and achieve set business objectives.

1. Sign-up forms to grow audience base

Marketing products and services on digital channels require an audience you can target. A generic approach was not sufficient to sell fabrics online. Therefore, we started out by adding sign-up forms on the website and blogs to create an audience base of interested buyers. These subscribers were entitled to the latest updates and discount coupons through emails. To keep things simple, we only focused on collecting essential details like ‘Full name’, ‘Email address’, and ‘Birthday’.

2. Website integrations

The second step was to add a diverse range of website integrations for fetching
customer details from different sources. This was done to streamline operations and
collate essential details for marketing new products and keeping customers updated
on the latest discount offers. We installed over 250 website integrations to
uncomplicate things. Since these integrations helped fetch data from different
customer journeys, it was easier to curate and send targeted marketing messages.

3. Organisation and segmentation

Organisation and segmentation of data play a crucial role in personalisation and automation. Leveraging different website integrations aided in developing a ‘single source of truth’ for the audience database. It helped Charu Creation to access all audience details in one place. They were able to organise and segment the audience into different categories, which was vital to send hyper-targeted messages based on the audience’s location, activity, interest, etc. For example, a promotional email with the subject line ‘Buy one, get one free’ was sent to audiences under the category ‘Moderately likely to buy again’.

4. Setting up the ‘Creative Assistant’

We simplified that hassle of building online marketing campaigns by setting up the ‘Creative Assistant’. The goal was to help Mr Tushar quickly set up beautiful marketing campaigns that could promote new offers, events, and products to different customers. Since customers were already segmented into different groups based on multiple factors, sending customised, relevant messages was easy. This helped to boost the engagement rate exponentially. For example, sending event- related updates to customers at selected pin codes based on the event's location.

5. Creating the customer journey builder

A customer journey builder is an excellent tool for learning about the evolution and experience of customers at each stage of the sales funnel. It helps to provide valuable insights to improve different stages in the customer’s journey. It also aids in segregating customer profiles based on their stage of the journey. One of the biggest benefits of a customer journey builder tool is the automation of marketing communication. Mr Tushar was able to automate and time his communication with prospective customers based on their journey. For example, sending automated messages 10 hours after the customer has abandoned the cart.

6. Setting up a dynamic analytics dashboard

Measuring results is essential to take the required corrective measures and improve the marketing ROI. We setup a dynamic analytics baseboard to help Mr Tushar keep a tab on the performance of his marketing campaigns. Besides providing comprehensive reports on the audience’s profile and campaign performance, it also provided recommendations on the following steps to improve results. For example, features like A/B testing helped Tushar find the best email subject line after analysing the open rate for both.