Imagine the happiness
on the gardener’s face, when he sees his small seedlings transform into a plant
bearing fruits and flowers. Priceless, isn’t it? Imagine seeing your idea
turn into a final product. An idea that was once a part of the pages of your
diary, an idea that you probably saw erasing out every time you struggled with
setting it up, an idea that finally flew out of your mind and saw the light of
the day. You had waited for this moment with baited breath. You are
finally ‘live’ to the whole world wide web.
That’s precisely how Housetohomeindia – a home décor and furnishings brand feels at the moment. Born in 1989 as Multitech Services, they are now country’s leading buying houses in the field of home décor and furnishings. Having represented well-known global chains of home stores in South Africa, Australia, UK and Europe as their buying agents, they have access to the most current and popular international designs. The past 25 years has seen them establish excellent working relationships with factories spread across the country and execute these designs to international standards.
That’s precisely how Housetohomeindia – a home décor and furnishings brand feels at the moment. Born in 1989 as Multitech Services, they are now country’s leading buying houses in the field of home décor and furnishings. Having represented well-known global chains of home stores in South Africa, Australia, UK and Europe as their buying agents, they have access to the most current and popular international designs. The past 25 years has seen them establish excellent working relationships with factories spread across the country and execute these designs to international standards.
It was then that they realized why should the Indian customer be deprived of these international designs? Thus, was born Housetohomeindia. “When we went to stores in the market to check out what products they had, we realized they were selling things that we had already sold long before. That’s when we decided that probably we should start something that lets the people in India choose world-class products that are fresh and not backdated,” says Raj Kumar, proprietor, Housetohomeindia.
With their established relationships with the designers from Denmark, Sweden, Mauritius and other parts of the globe, Raj and his team was able to put together the idea that could be a profitable business. Now, with a brand of their own, and a name that’s getting recognized by designers across the board, Housetohomeindia is all set to build a marketplace of their own in the online world. “Our products are are on display on February 11 and 12th at the ID Design Fair in New Delhi. We are very excited about it. The designers have themselves picked up products from our website and decided to display it in the fair. Our products are also going to be on display on their mobile app,” says Raj adding that this is going to be a good breakthrough for them as they deal in B2B business as well and such exposure will get them in touch with future clients as well as customers.
Establishing your own e-commerce marketplace site is not an easy task, especially, when you have the likes of Flipkart, Amazon, Snapdeal and others ruling the charts. Further, when you sell through these sites, it is then you realize the problems that loom large if not taken into consideration since the beginning. You need a website of your own, where you can handle all your customer data along with their preferences and other logistics and profits. This is why Housetohomeindia chose to develop a site with seller console and all their back-end CRM & ERP apps on MobifyStore- an emerging commerce platform.
“We did try selling
through big e-commerce sites. But we realized there the electronic segment was
the most popular and sought after product category. Having been in the export
business for over two decades, we decided to start something of our own.
When we started with the idea, we met several developers for developing our
website. But for us, it was not just developing the site and forgetting it. We
needed a strong backend, from where we could gather data and derive strategies
accordingly for further expansions. Through a friend, I came to know about KK
and his venture. And, the rest is history as they say,” adds Raj hoping that
all the efforts that has gone into putting together a website with a robust
platform to take care of every intrinsic aspect of their daily business will do
well. From centralized vendor’s product or payment management, inventory
management, operational functionalities of their regular business and many
more, each and every aspect of the online business of Housetohomeindia will be
taken care of on their site powered by MobifyStore.
“Rather than running to get the results, we hope to promote, walk and establish ourselves well in the market,” concludes Raj. After all, slow and steady wins the race. This saying holds true especially in the case of online marketplaces which has seen mushrooming of websites at a pace almost same as the downsizing and closure of several other big online sites.
