The festive season is here. This means D2C platforms like Amazon, Flipkart, and Myntra are caught up in the rat race, competing with the best discount schemes for the fashion brands on their platform. In this cutthroat competition from September with Navratri and Dussehra, followed by Eid, Diwali, and Christmas, until December, fashion brands need to up their game to appeal to these platforms to boost their sales.

According to data released by LocalCircles, a citizen and community engagement platform, spending in the festive season in 2022 could hit $32 billion as Indian households prepare for a restriction-free Dusshera and Diwali.

According to consulting firm RedSeer Consulting, online sales are expected to rise year-on-year to $11.8 billion. Online sales saw a rise of $5.9 billion in the first week of the festive season, as compared to $4.8 billion in 2021. Large D2C eCommerce marketplaces help brands with visibility and discovery, a problem many new brands face. Fashion brands see a substantial portion of their business come in during the festival sales, so they invest heavily ahead of time to increase capacity and add features to handle the surge in orders while ensuring a smooth experience for both customers and sellers.

However, that isn’t enough. Fashion brands need to personalize themselves to be seen by D2C platforms and to be known for who they are and what they do.

Personalization refers to modifying and catering to customers’ requirements and their needs by personally interacting with them. There was a time when customers went to tailors to get their clothes stitched and customized according to the design, size, and measurements. In the present times, fashion brands use AI and chatbots to let customers customize how they want their attire to be. Customers also fill out quizzes and tell them about fit, size, style, and budget preferences that would be useful for the stylist. One of the advantages of personalization is that customers can provide personal details that are hard to capture on a regular shopping site. For example, during the festive season, customers look for lehengas or other ethnic wear that can make them stand out and suit their tastes.

There has also been a rise in independent small fashion brands that heavily depend on customized fashion apparel that bigger brands can acquire to boost their visibility in the D2C market space. Top fashion brands on D2C platforms have access to the analytics, such as the most searched keywords and the items in demand on these sites. According to SmartHQ, 80% of frequent shoppers only shop with brands that personalize the experience.

Therefore, personalization is multi-faceted as it can be applied to customer experience, customer service, product offerings, e-mail marketing, product features, push notifications, etc. Over the last decade, things have evolved and everyone in the industry is now more customer-centric.

Shopping for clothes online comes with a perennial pain point: customers can’t try anything on before making a purchase. This leads to a lot of hesitant buyers and missed sales. The holiday season is the best time for D2C eCommerce platforms to use this to their benefit and put their personalization skills to work. Customers who buy dresses from D2C eCommerce sites expect them to incorporate personalized elements like customized marketing strategies, and product or service offerings based on their interests and preferences.

Apart from attractive selling strategies like highly discounted attire and customized marketing strategies, early preparedness with inventory and increased speed of production and delivery of products also make customers come back to brands to buy more from them.

As a marketing strategy, the choice of media to market products is also a point of consideration since social media is a huge fad when it comes to influencing customers to buy. Choosing the right influencers to review and market the fashion brand on YouTube or Instagram also boosts sales during the holiday season.

Indian customers look forward to checking the look and feel of products, apart from how they are priced. Platforms need to make sure they make sure the authenticity of products, better pricing, and availability of the latest collection drive the growth of personalized fashion brands during the festive season. Both independent online fashion brands and the D2C platform need to provide an excellent experience to their customers, which will help their sales skyrocket during the holiday season.