India’s leading online custom furniture brand – WoodenStreet – laid out its plan to establish 50+ Experience Stores across the country within the next 24 months. This new expansion plan was announced recently with the launch of 4 new experience stores, bringing the total to 17 stores. The company will be investing between $8 million to $10 million for this nationwide expansion.
WoodenStreet’s CEO Lokendra Ranawat said, “This is an era of personalisation. The industry sees a dramatic shift towards personalised products to cater the needs of an individual. And this is why personalization drives WoodenStreet at the core. Because every Indian home is different, we provide the flexibility to customize furniture as per an individual’s taste.”
The new phase was initiated with the opening of two experience stores in the Whitefield and Kalyan Nagar suburbs of Bengaluru. These add to the existing store in HSR Layout of the metropolis.
Similarly, alongside the existing experience store in Miyapur, Hyderabad, the company will open a new storefront within the upscale Banjara Hills locality. And in Mumbai,where an experience store exists in Powai,a new store will open in the commercial neighbourhood of Parel.
These four experience stores are the first leg of the larger expansion picture, which sees a vast chain across the country.
Currently, the company attracts about 12,000 – 15,000 visitors per day on their website, WoodenStreet.com, emerging as one of the most successful e-commerce platforms. Thanks to its unique products and furniture customization, it witnesses 4 to 5 times more engagement when compared to other major players of the industry.
Wooden Street Furnitures Private Ltd
Wooden Street started its operations in a small manner. Company was formed in July,2015. Wooden Street is based at Rajasthan which provides ready as well as customized furniture solutions for people’s home furnishing needs. The company provides affordable furniture in a variety of styles with a focus on innovation and provide better utility such as storage and maximum utilization of space. The company specializes in solid wood furniture made of Sheesham, Mango wood, etc. Though, there are big players such as Pepperfry and Urban Ladder in this space, the company has an edge over such big player that it customizes furniture as per the specifications of the customers.
The company helps its customers by bypassing the middlemen to cut additional costs. Company manufactures the furniture through their exclusive vendor’s manufacturing units in Jodhpur and Jaipur. It may be interesting to know that Jodhpur and Jaipur contributes to more than 90% supplies of Solid Wood furniture in India.
● Operating history
Wooden Street was co-founded by Mr Lokendra Ranawat, Mr Dinesh Pratap, Mr Virendra Ranawat. Mr Lokendra is an engineering graduate with 10+ years of experience in Digital marketing, Web design, User Interface. Mr Dinesh is an alumnus of MNIT, Jaipur and holds an MBA from IIM Kozhikode. Dinesh has worked with P&G Asia as Supply Chain Manager. Mr Virendra is an engineer with an MBA from IIMM Pune.
Apart from the founding team, Company has a team of 120 people overlooking activities such as designing, prototyping, sourcing, order management, sales etc. Currently, their teams operate from multiple offices, located in Udaipur, Jaipur and Jodhpur and various cities where furniture delivery takes place.
Company believes in ideology that, as Indian consumers acquire new tastes, retailers are less and less able to satiate their demand with readymade choices of furniture and are also focusing on providing custom-made furniture.
Company operates 15 Retail stores across India, located in below cities:
1. Bangalore
2. Mumbai
3. Chennai
4. Noida
5. Gurgaon
6. Hyderabad
7. Pune
8. Ahmedabad
9. Indore
10. Jaipur
● Key Milestones
USP of the Company
Company’s unique selling proposition vis-à-vis its competitors can broadly be summarised as below:
a) Custom Made furniture
b) Higher Ticket Size and lower Acquisition cost
c) Focus on Design options and Multiutility Furniture
d) Go to Market strategy via mix of Online and Offline model
The most popular products with customers are as under:
The below figure represents the category sales of furniture sold by the company. Top 5 category make 55% of sales. The other category products which contribute to 17% of the revenue of the company.
Lokendra Singh Ranawat Found er & CEO, WoodenStreet
Lokendra Singh Ranawat, Co-founder of Woodenstreet.com, has worked in many reputed organizations such as Birlasoft (UK) Ltd, Axis IT&T, Keane in India and London. After gaining a rich experience of 10years from these renowned companies, he initiated WoodenStreet, which is considered as India’s fastest growing online platform for customized furniture.
His Idea Behind WoodenStreet:
Understanding the highly fragmented and unorganized sector of the 20B furniture industry in India, he co-founded WoodenStreet with a belief that there is room for more. To fit with the consumers need, the idea was to collaborate with the finest makers and in-house furniture designers. Combining an implicit understanding of what is high in demand, team WoodenStreet envision to set new bars in the industry. His research conceptualized that each high-end furniture typically passes through the hands of several middlemen till it reaches the customers. The team focused to injecttechnology, accessibility, and professionalism in their working to recreate the magic of unique furniture to every space by creating a curated platform.
Under his leadership, WoodenStreet has accumulated several accolades mentioned as below:-
- Awarded TIMES ENTREPRENEURS 2016by TheTimes Of India.
- Received recognition at Excellence Award 2016organized by Hindustan Times.
- Covered by Facebook Indiafor leading the charge of bringing a traditional industry into the digital economy.
WoodenStreet, a Jaipur-based online custom-furniture platform, has also successfully raised USD 1 Million in Series-A round. The funding was led by RVCF (Rajasthan Venture Capital Funds), and the investment was overseen by Growth India Fund.
