My Dream Store : A Marketplace Making Selling Easy Through Custom-Made Merchandise

My Dream Store is an marketplace, which started its operations in September 2014 by Karthik Venkat (CEO) , Satish Bala ( Co Founder).

The startup intends to make online selling easy through custom-made merchandise.

The company is India’s first platform that produces and delivers unique, customized products that are designed by you and accessible to your friends, family, followers and millions of online shoppers waiting for them.

My Dream Store’s base charge covers the cost for base item, printing & delivery charges. Only after the products are delivered, they deduct the base charge and transfer profit margins to the sellers.

Chitrakshi Suneja Interacts With Karthik Venkat, CEO, My Dream Store And Spoke To Him

Idea Generation

Our earlier venture E-Sparsha was into bulk-merchandising and ran mostly on offline retail. We were selling custom merchandise to colleges and corporate, pan India. An opportunity to tap into the ecommerce space was viable and My Dream Store was founded. Perspectives and problems of the buyer-seller equation were studied and our platform was tailor-made to suit both needs.

I. Create and Sell (Retailers problem)

Retailers who wishes to sell apparel online have to forecast the quantities, sizes and invest on procuring inventory, get them printed and stock them. They risk the expenses to get them printed. Moreover, distribution and collection is a major pain-point as is building a quality network of garment suppliers.

Then there is always risk associated with inventory - What will happen to my inventory if no one buys it? As my business grows how do I manage my inventory? Who will handle my customer queries? What will happen to my returns? What kind of apparel people would like to buy? What colors they prefer and accordingly, what stock do I have to plan and procure?

II. Wear what I want (Buyers Problem)

People like to buy products that resonate with their ideas, hobbies, affiliations, passions etc and what better medium than t-shirts, mobile cases, hoodies to flaunt it around. There are very limited options online for getting stuff that matters to you. Even if you find one, the extent of customization is very less. This major buyer pain-point is solved by the My Dream Store team.

Our solution is to have the best of Technology, Inventory Management and Operations to address the above needs.

Special Key Features

The core feature is that we enable online selling with Zero Cost, Zero Risk and Zero Hassles. Any individual can start selling online with no upfront costs.

Here are some of the important features:

- Provision to create Storefronts to showcase all your products under 1page.

- Analytics Dashboard – that gives campaign performance related insights.

- Each campaign can include multiple products and colors for all the apparel.

- Only platform in India to offer multiple products like Apparel, Posters, Mugs, Mobile Cases etc. to chose from.

- My Dream Store University – Self learning portal for Sellers.

Differentiation Factors

Listed below are some figures distinguishing us from our other market contenders:

- Lowest Base Price: Since our base price is much lower than other similar platforms, our campaigners set a higher margin for themselves while keeping the price of their custom merchandise at a reasonable rate.

- Highly Committed Seller-Support Team: We are very dedicated to the success of our campaigners. We do everything in our power to teach them the ways of designing and promotion so that they have the best chance to reach out to surplus consumers and sell their merchandise through our seller training program.

- Strong Operations: We were into the bulk merchandising business over the last 6 years that helped us build a strong supplier network and a high-end, state of the art operations team.

- Community Engagement: We train our sellers and involve them in Sales activities, Shopping fests through a strategic timeline.

We are the only company to give Advance Analytics to our sellers.

Challenges Faced

Setting up the operations segment is probably the biggest challenge for any e-commerce company which is into custom merchandising/apparel. However, our previous experience in the sector was a huge benefit to the current venture.

Next, the most important thing was finding the right people to work with, people who believed in our idea and shared the same vision, enthusiasm and vigor. Hiring right talent in the early stages had a big impact in the growth, scaling & direction of the company, making sure that everyone stuck to the common vision. Fortunately we are able to attract people from IIMs, IITs, NITs, BITS Pilani to work with My Dream Store.

Funding Details

We have received an Angel investment of USD$ 320,000 in mid January 2015. Since then we have grown 20X in GMVs.

We are currently looking for a Series-A funding, which will be dedicated for Seller - Acquisition & Training, Category Expansion, Investments in Tech, Marketing & Operations.

Monetization Model

The base price- the most fundamental cost of merchandise to the consumer that does not include common extra fees. In addition to the base price of a product, fees that raise the overall price to buyers are often assessed by sellers for such things as sales tax, shipping charges and extra equipment or supply options. The base price varies depending on the different product demographics which includes the technology, operations and logistics costs.

The profit margin earned by the seller is safely transferred to his account after the base price is deducted.

Market Size and Opportunity

Apparel which is our primary focus market stood at USD$ 2.8 billion in 2015 and is set to reach USD$ 35 billion by 2020. We at My Dream Store are building an entrepreneurship enabling platform that could handle such a vast market size.

We are currently dealing with products across categories like Apparel, Mobile Accessories, Stationary, Gifting. Our addressable market size is around USD$ 1.3 Billion, it is set to reach USD$ 8.3 billion by 2020.