What Strategies is Arrow Adopting to Delve Deeper into Tier II & III Towns

What Strategies is Arrow Adopting to Delve Deeper into Tier II & III Towns
The brand is on a strong growth momentum having registered a growth of 12-15 percent on a matured base.

By Vaishnavi gupta , Sr Correspondent

25 Nov 2022 | 14 min read

Arrow as a brand has been on a path of constant growth and evolution. With the offices opening up post-pandemic, there has been a rapid growth in demand as people are now in need of refreshing their wardrobes which have significantly helped Arrow gain scale.

To help sustain and build on this growth, the brand has also introduced a few exciting product changes to establish a fresh identity for the brand post-pandemic. A new vector logo is now being used in all its labels, communication, and signage.

To further establish Arrow’s fresh identity as a fashion-forward brand, it has also successfully launched its new campaign ‘On top of the world’ in association with Bollywood royalty Hrithik Roshan. With this campaign, Arrow has reinstated its authority on premium elegant fashion that continues to evolve and excel to meet the need of the ‘Arrow man’.

“The brand is on a strong growth momentum having registered a growth of 12-15 percent on a matured base. It is steadily shaping up to be a Rs 1000 crore brand,” said Suman Saha, CEO, Arrow.

Offline Play

In terms of its retail presence, the brand has been steadily expanding its presence over the last few years, not just with standalone stores, but also within various multi-brand outlets and department stores. It currently has over 212 exclusive stores across the nation and is available in over 1000 multi-brand outlets in around 109 cities across the nation.

For its offline retail format, Arrow always targets its presence at both malls and high streets. Both of these two offline retail formats have their own pros and cons, as both these formats bring in a high footfall for the store but their location also plays a key role.

“Thus, our specific approach towards targeting ‘which’ malls and high streets to enter heavily depends upon finding the target consumers at these locations and then focusing on presenting the brand in the best way possible to the local population,” stated Saha.

Arrow

E-Commerce Gaining Relevance

When it comes to the strategic shifts post-pandemic, Arrow has observed that a significant amount of its consumers have now shifted to digital commerce. Thus, to keep up with the current dynamics in which the business is shaping up, it has certainly pushed its efforts and investments into building a more robust e-commerce channel for its online consumers.

“When it comes to our D2C strategy, we have observed that most of the customers who experience the brand for the first time are usually happy with the product and brand experience and ends up becoming loyal customer of the brand. Thus, we plan to keep on investing our energies into our D2C offerings,” he asserted.

Apart from its website, the brand sells through all leading e-commerce websites, including Amazon and Flipkart.

“E-commerce currently contributes 15-17 percent to our total sales, with a potential to go up to 20 percent in the next few years,” added Saha.

Omnichannel: A Way Ahead

The omnichannel strategy incorporates a set of technologies that allows the brand to create “Contextual Omnipresence” for its consumers. That means the product/service that Arrow is offering is available to the consumer whenever and however they need it.

The brand is now available on all the leading e-commerce platforms which are deeply integrated with its omnichannel, which is helping provide quick resolutions for its customers. The product consumer order can now be easily delivered to its doorstep or can be picked up from the brand store at the consumer’s liking.

“This omnichannel strategy is helping us provide greater linkages to the stores and this new strategic approach has definitely helped us serve our consumers better,” he explained.

Brand Offerings

Currently, Arrow is operating with 4 sub-brands namely Arrow New York, Arrow Sports, Arrow Jeans, and Arrow Women.

The brand has been observing a growing demand for the Arrow Sports section. Though it is an extension of its mainline collection, this particular section is observing a heightened interest from its customers. Arrow Sports is primarily focused on incorporating the casual/sporty look for the modern-day consumer who likes to keep it casual and comfortable at both work and the office. And this comfort mixed with style is what most of its consumers are seeking out currently, thereby bringing about immense growth in this section.

“In the near future, we plan to add more collections and products to these existing sub-brands, especially Arrow New York, and focus more on their penetration in new locations before their expansion into new categories,” noted Saha.

Arrow

The Power of Social Commerce

The country is rapidly digitizing and the brand understands the importance of social media platforms in shaping the e-commerce experience. For this reason, Arrow is currently leveraging all the social commerce platforms like Facebook, Instagram, and WhatsApp as one of the key drivers to update its consumers about the latest products and offerings.

Arrow also understands the power of marrying content with the brand ethos when it comes to its social media platforms and thus its pages/profiles on all the leading social commerce platforms focus more on creating engaging conversations with its followers to connect with them on a deeper level, without inviting them to shop. The brand looks at marrying the key stories of the season into its content by engaging with influencers along with promoting its staple products.

“This approach helps us create stickiness and relatability for the brand, which also helps a consumer relate on a more personal level with our ethos. Additionally, to drive sales, we also run ads on these social media platforms from time to time in order to share our capsule collections with the users,” he said.

Technology At Par

Apart from its omnichannel approach, there are quite a few interesting things the brand is experimenting with, which are still in their nascent stages. One of them is to leverage a host of AI and ML-based solutions to understand consumer preferences as well as its ability to predict their behavior. This technology can help track consumer journeys across various touch points and put the business in a better position to react.

Arrow is also looking at digital product creation as one of the technologies to be leveraged, as it can drastically shorten the lead time along with giving it the ability to deliver customization/co-creation with our consumers.

Marketing Strategy

Over the past few years, the brand’s marketing strategy has evolved from being a ‘seasoned marketing’ communication to a much more advanced ‘everyday’ communication approach. It tries and stays relevant for the consumers by creating a buzz about the brand where the consumer can engage directly with the brand, without having a reason to shop. This direct engagement with its consumers helps it in understanding them better along with the consumers getting a chance to engage with the brand beyond shopping.

Given the current times, while offline activities do continue, the brand has put a lot of focus on digital and is working on communication strategies to build a strong reason for the consumer to shop with the brand.

Lastly, when it comes to its tactical approach, Arrow has evolved to include digital for both top-of-the-funnel and mid-of-the-funnel stages in its marketing strategy.

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Bringing Tier II and III Cities into Focus

Arrow already has a strong foothold in Tier I cities and now, with the help of its robust e-commerce channels, the brand is also building a strong online presence in Tier II and III cities.

To cap into these growing markets, the brand is currently looking at two major steps. Firstly, Arrow is planning on opening new stores in Tier II cities where it has not yet reached, or where it feels the customer footfall needs to be captured, and secondly, with its expanding e-commerce presence, the brand is now penetrating into a lot of Tier II as well as Tier III cities, and so it plans to keep building and expanding its consumer demographic.

Additionally, Arrow has also been strategically choosing more and more locations to expand in Tier II and III cities so that the people in these cities can now get the full brand experience.

“Tier I cities contribute to 43-45 percent of our total revenue while the rest of India contributes to 55-57 percent. Tier II and III cities are often looked at together as these are strategic expansions basis market potential,” Saha informed.

To delve deeper into the demands of its consumers into these cities, the brand takes a detailed and localized marketing approach.

“Before penetrating a new region, we deeply study the local market, and once we have opened the new store, along with the usual PR and online activations, we focus a lot more on local activations along with leveraging the reach of local influencers relevant to those markets to create brand awareness,” he concluded.

Arrow as a brand has been on a path of constant growth and evolution. With the offices opening up post-pandemic, there has been a rapid growth in demand as people are now in need of refreshing their wardrobes which have significantly helped Arrow gain scale.

To help sustain and build on this growth, the brand has also introduced a few exciting product changes to establish a fresh identity for the brand post-pandemic. A new vector logo is now being used in all its labels, communication, and signage.

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