TheBagTalk: A Disruptive Shopping Marketplace To Launch Soon

What is the first accessory that comes to a woman’s mind, if she thinks of stepping out and matching it to her dress? Any guesses… It’s not very difficult to arrive at the right answer. Yes, it has got to be her handbag, purse or clutch.

Even though today, we all girls have a great sense of what goes with what and we sure can buy those right picks from a plenty of hyper-local marketplaces, it is never going to be enough.

Have you ever thought of designs before ordering something online and had second thoughts, well now with TheBagTalk you can actually visit their studios offline and buy online in stores.

TheBagTalk, is India’s first ever curated marketplace exclusively for bags, luggage, handbags, clutches and wallets and more. The startup has been founded by Tushar Jain and actress Anita Hassanandani, along with Rohit Reddy as the CEO.

TheBagTalk aims to disrupt the bag shopping experience through innovations such as a beautifully curated shopping experience, stunning UI/UX, high-quality content beyond shopping, exclusive celebrity and innovation ranges, the most seller-friendly reconciliation remuneration model, machine-learning intelligent brick-n-mortar stores, and real-time delivery through HSCV’s 43 depots located pan-India.

Meet the Founders
Tushar Jain is the owner of High Spirit Commercial Ventures Pvt Ltd (HSCV), which has been into manufacturing and retailing of bags for two decades under brands called ‘Hashtag’ (Backpacks brand positioned for the youth; The word ‘Hashtag’ is trademarked by HSCV for Bags and Luggage in India) and ‘Traworld’ (Luggage brand). HSCV also has exclusive licenses from Disney and Doraemon to manufacture and retail bags for the school range. HSCV also owns and operates warehouses across 43 locations in India. HSCV reaches the length and breadth of India via its retailer partner network of ~12000 retailers. Tushar is a majority stakeholder and co-founder of TheBagTalk. HSCV products would hence be exclusively available online only on TheBagTalk.

Anita Hassanandani is a popular TV and Film actor in India, has designed a range of handbags available at the platform TheBagTalk.com under her label ‘AHR- short for Anita Hassanandani Reddy’. She is also one of the co-founder.

Rohit Reddy is a digital evangelist and has been into Banking and Insurance for 10 years. Rohit has been instrumental in setting up the digital innovations vertical for IDFC Bank, Standard Chartered Bank and AEGON Life Insurance.

The Offerings & Process
The team already has 20 bag manufacturers/brands on board. They would not be listing distributors/retailers on the site. This helps us connect the brand directly with the consumer, and eliminates the various pricing related issues being faced by brands currently.
These 20 manufacturers would give them access to 35-40 bag brands. They plan to take this number up to a staggering 100 brands by March.

TheBagTalk has some clear differentiators. These include:
o Better UI/UX compared to other marketplaces, which accentuates the overall brand appeal. Every consumer should feel an aesthetic design language present across the buying process.
o Product photography being undertaken for the brands in a high-fashion format, rather than plain Jane white background imagery you see across marketplaces. Each bag is showcased in a high-fashion style giving a sense of aspiration to the consumer.
o Real-time access to various world-class analytics, not being offered to brands today.
o 360 degree native advertising possibilities: They have an in house content creation and content marketing team that aims to provide high quality content with short videos and blogs create interesting marketing possibilities for brands.
o Individual agents to introduce the products within their respective friends/family circles.
o Real time Payment Reconciliation (which is a major pain point for brands listed on e-commerce marketplaces today)
o Social media marketing across the social networks of TheBagTalk.
o Apart from being an e-commerce platform, we are building a heavy content platform too. This section is already live.
o Currently our focus is on written content which in the next month will diversify to high-quality video content as well.

Marketing Efforts by the Startup
o Sitting on top of the transaction site and the blog is a loyalty program which gratifies users for:
 Simply engaging with the content (reading, sharing, taking polls, etc.)
 Filling basic information (name, email, address, phone number, social access etc.)
 Purchase behaviour
 The user can then use these earned points (we call them CLINKS) to redeem for purchases.
o Private Labels: We would be launching the following labels/brands via the parent company High Spirit Commercial Ventures (HSCV), which has been into manufacturing & distribution for the last 20 years.
 Hashtag: The word HASHTAG has been trademarked by HSCV, and would be focussing on backpacks for the college goers. This would be exclusive to TheBagTalk.
 Disney: This range would be made available to TheBagTalk via HSCV for backpacks & luggage for various Disney (including Avengers) characters
o Celebrity Ranges: Various celebrity ranges (Anita Hassanandani, Rannvijay Singh, Ekta Kapoor, Jonty Rhodes, etc.) would be manufactured and launched exclusively on the site. The celebrity would be promoting the bags cross his/her social networks, and there by driving traffic on to the site. Just to give you a sense, between Anita, Rannvijay and Ekta, the social reach is a staggering 6M (Instagram, Facebook, and Twitter).
o Store Model: To achieve a true omni-channel experience, we would also be launching our brick-n-mortar stores. These would be state of art, highly tech enabled formats where in the consumers could engage with the products (to get a touch-n-feel), and eventually buy online (at the store, or on their device). The delivery of the product would happen via the logistics partners. The store will be designed using machine learning, deep learning, and analytics technologies to help understand the customer and provide the best possible experience.
o Online Agents: They are enrolling individuals who would be our representatives and would power-up their devices to assist a sale within their peer networks. In return they would earn a commission.
o Additionally, they would also be launching a B2B platform, wherein corporates could order in bulk for their requirements.
o Lastly, since HSCV owns and operates its own depots across 43 locations, TheBagTalk would be able to stock and deliver locally to those locations within a day, once the volumes pick up and we get a sense of the demand from that particular location

Immediate Competitors in this Space
Amazon.com, Flipkart.com, snapdeal.com, jabong.com, myntra.com, stalkbuylove.com, koovs.com, shopclues.com, voonik.com

Launch Plan
The media launch is on 24th February, 2016, the website will have soft-launched by 16th February.Their marketing strategy is to create an Instagram, Facebook, and Twitter blitzkrieg 8 days into the run-up using 100+ celebrities and their accounts who will be talking about the TheBagTalk.com and their launch invite.