It’s hard to imagine a day without using footwear in our daily life! The global footwear market is expected to grow at a compound annual growth rate of 3.8% from 2019 to 2025 to reach USD 269.9 billion by 2025.

‍

With advancements in technology, innovation, automated machinery, workforce availability, the growth of eCommerce, and changing consumer habits, the footwear industry's prospects have improved. The demand for trendy, fashionable, athletic, and sports shoes has further opened the scope of development and growth for the footwear Industry.

‍

Footwear is one of the essential accessories for both men and women. Not only do they make you look good, but they also provide protection and comfort to your feet. The online footwear business in India is growing rapidly as more and more people buy shoes and sandals online every day. If you are thinking of starting an online footwear business in India, these are the proper steps to help you get started:

‍

1) Decide your online footwear store’s name

When starting an online footwear store, the domain name is one of the most critical decisions. The domain name is what customers will see in their browser window, and it is also how they will find your online footwear business in a search engine.

‍

You want to choose a name that accurately represents your business, is easy to remember, and is available as a web address. Catwalk is an attractive domain name of a famous footwear brand that has exclusive footwear products like boots, heels, sandals, sporty shoes, and ballerinas for women.

‍

2) Determine your target customers

It's up to the footwear brand to research, launch and find target customers for their products in the market. You must choose a specific niche to serve your target customers. It can be trendy, chic & casual footwear for women or light sporty, pure leather, or recyclable formal shoes for men.

‍

Aspiring footwear businesses can 

• Research the competition to find the target customer age group, their buying habits (online/offline channels)

• They can create a buyer persona that can help define the exact target audience to whom they want to sell their products.

‍

For instance, the target customer for your footwear brand can be a city folk in the age group 30-35 years, that is commuting 25-30 Kms every day on his bike. He wants a dark-colored shoe that is easy to wash, is airy, comfortable to wear, and has a good grip. Another customer avatar can be young women who love going to parties on the weekend and want hand-embroidered shoes. 

‍

3) Get an Online footwear business license

The business license for an online footwear store depends on the type of products and your business license. Moreover, every state and city has some different requirements which you need to find out.

‍

Some licenses that an online shoe business requires include:

• A Business Operation License is for your online footwear business to operate in your city, country, or state.

• An Employer Identification Number (EIN) is a tax identification number that uniquely identifies your business as a separate tax entity.

• A Seller's Permit (or Seller's License) is required to sell shoes lawfully online.

‍

4) Have an excellent brand logo

Footwear is a very personal product, and it is crucial that the customer feels an emotional connection to the product. A well-designed logo can help create this connection by communicating the essence of the footwear brand. 

‍

It is also essential for a logo to be memorable so that customers will see it and recognize the brand name. Finally, a logo should accurately reflect the company's values and mission. By taking all of these factors into account, an online footwear business can create a compelling and lasting brand identity with its logo. Fila & Nike are examples of famous footwear brands in India with memorable logos.

‍

5) Product pricing

As an online footwear business owner, it is essential to balance the price as higher pricing would lower sales, and lower pricing would affect the profits. Choose the most appropriate pricing plan for your online shoe business after considering elements such as product and business costs, competitive pricing, and revenue targets.

‍

Here are some key strategies that can help decide the price of footwear products.

• The price recommended by the shoe manufacturer

• Competitive pricing is the practice of using rival pricing data as a standard and purposefully pricing the product lower or higher than their price.

• You are using keystone pricing, a method of determining the retail price of a product where you double the wholesale cost of the product. It can be used to plan discounts purposefully on different products.

6)  Marketing your footwear business

If you have creativity, style, and a little business sense, you can build a strong marketing plan for your footwear brand that rivals your competition. Here are some unique ways to market your footwear business.

‍

Marketing your customer service

Developing a marketing strategy around what sets your brand & customer service apart can help you attract business. Zappos is a shoe company that offers excellent customer service, and its shipping service is free, offers a 365 days return policy, with the famous Zappos call center.

‍

Market to your community

Market your product to your community, which may show a desire to support you and local businesses. This way the community is exposed to your customers first -- whether you have a local store or people see you and your customers wearing your styles around town.

‍

Market to your niche

Find a famous footwear line that sells products similar to yours and analyze their marketing strategies. Focus on finding answer to these critical questions - To what audience do they market their products? What marketing media do they use? Ask yourself how you can improve on similar techniques to sell your line?

‍

7) Using SaaS eCommerce platform to launch your footwear business

You can use SaaS eCommerce platforms like Fynd Platform that helps footwear businesses in hosting, shipping, catalog management, order management, inventory management, SEO & other marketing tools if you do not want to deal with the technical complications of managing an eCommerce website.

‍

Here are some of the striking features of the Fynd Platform that can help develop a business-ready online footwear business in India. Fynd Platform has helpful features specially curated for building your online footwear store:

‍

• Custom domain: Connect your custom domain to your website

• Fynd Payment gateway: For accepting safe online payments from multiple payment modes

• Selling locations: The number of selling locations you can plug in inventory for.

• SSL certificate helps build trust for your online clothing store and is inbuilt in Fynd Platform websites.

• Email & SMS Marketing: Get email and SMS marketing for driving marketing campaigns and reaching the target audience.

• Logistic Support: Get 24 hours logistic support from Fynd Platform

• Coupon & discounts: You can create custom coupons & discounts for targeting new & existing customers, which will also help grow their loyalty

• SEO friendly: Fynd Platform provides SEO friendly online store for growing organic traffic from search engines and social media platforms

• Blogging support: You can create, write & manage blogs on online business websites created with Fynd Platform.

‍

Start a free trial today! Build your online footwear business with Fynd Platform. Subscription packages start as low as INR 599 per month to INR 2499 per month.

‍

8) Select wholesalers & manufacturers

Make contact with several distributors and manufacturers. Ideally, you should purchase directly from the manufacturer rather than a wholesaler. It means you can buy the shoes for a lower price, but it may require you to place a larger order.

‍

It is also important to investigate which of them provides good shipping services, enabling you to keep your inventory levels low. Choose the wholesaler or manufacturer who will provide you with the lowest cost per unit of footwear for your business.

‍

9) Fulfilling the order with faster delivery

When customers place orders, place an order with your footwear supplier. Pay the wholesale footwear supplier the wholesale footwear cost, and ship the footwear to clients in boxes labelled with the customer's shipping information.

‍

The quicker is the delivery time of your business, the happier the customers are that help grow repeat business and brand loyalty for your footwear business. You too can start an online footwear business in India. The online footwear market is huge in India and gets bigger every year, and the best way to profit in this market is to sell online.

‍

We hope this blog post can give you a head start in starting your own footwear business. If you would like to find out more about how you can start an online business in India, feel free to Book a Demo or Contact us anytime.

‍

Numerous famous footwear brands like Leonish, Ameallyours & Catwalk have successfully utilized Fynd Platform to create their online footwear store and build a thriving business. Be a part of the growth story – Launch your online footwear business today with Fynd Platform.