Will online presence increase Adidas’s India business?

MUMBAI, INDIA: E-commerce challenge in the footwear segment has risen a notch higher!!!

Adidas has launched India’s fully integrated omni-channel model, which the company believes will help grow its India business by around 15 percent every year.

Adidas stores will now have tablets that will allow walk-in customers to order goods from any store irrespective of its location. By 2017, all Adidas and Reebok stores (around 750) will be omni-channel ready, said Abhishek Lal, Senior E-commerce Director, Adidas.

For instance, if a walk-in customer at an Adidas store in Town X does not find a particular model of footwear in a store in his city, he can order it from an Adidas store in the neighboring city or town through the in-store tab and it would be delivered to his house.

"Earlier, the customer would have walked out. Now, we have trained executives to step in and engage the customer through the tab, and close the sale through the omni-channel model,” Lal said.

With the new strategy, the company would be able to showcase all the 5,000 SKUs at a store using its stores as warehouses instead of the available SKUs available at an Adidas store at any given point in time.

In addition, it would also showcase certain launch certain products such as Adidas Neo exclusively for its omni-channel.

He added that the company expects half of India's total omni-channel sales to will come from tier-3 and -4 cities.

Adidas has tied up with companies such as Fedex, Ecom Express and Blue Dart for logistics support.