CaratLane accelerated its growth rate as offline sales also bounced back with the opening of more markets in Q3 and improvement in the customer sentiments during the key festive period. The Company recorded a revenue of Rs. 273 crores in the quarter, which was a 38 per cent growth over the same period in the previous year. November 2020 (the month of Dhanteras) was the first-ever 100 crores+ month for the Company. The Company continues to prioritise safety at all offices, stores, and manufacturing locations.
The brand’s approach continues to be online first, to drive traffic to the website enabling the customers to discover great products online and then helping the customer navigate to the best channel of purchase for themselves (online, CL Live, Try at Home, or stores).
The online business continued its strong growth trajectory in Q3 delivering a growth of 68 per cent. The online buying experience has been augmented with Try at Home and CaratLane LIVE – a video call service to enable customers to either see the jewellery before they buy or get a video consultation with an in-house jewellery expert. Try at Home service is getting a good response from the customers aiding in its strong growth of 37 per cent in Q3. This service has been scaled up to 15 cities, with Patna, Ludhiana and Chandigarh added in Q3.
The Company’s retail business also saw a strong rebound in Q3 with more customers stepping out to make their purchases. The channel delivered a growth of 43 per cent over the same period last year. Like-to-Like growth was 9 per cent for the quarter, with 17 per cent LTL growth for high street stores. The online- influenced store transactions continued to grow, which is driven by the Omni marketing strategy adopted by the Company.
A lot of preparatory work was done throughout the quarter to capitalise on the Dhanteras opportunity, including a special promotion plan to motivate customers to visit the stores before Dhanteras and beat the rush on Dhanteras day. The 100th store (in Bandra, Mumbai) was also launched in Q3, taking the total store count to 109 at the end of the quarter.
During the quarter, the Company launched Sholapith, the key collection for the Diwali festive season. The sub 10K studded category also saw a healthy recovery on the back of competitive pricing and new product introductions in time for the festive season. The Company continues to broaden its portfolio of offerings. ‘Shaya’, the silver jewellery brand continued its stellar performance, clocking a 161 per cent growth over last year.
The kid’s jewellery category has also been a big focus for the brand and saw healthy growth in the festive season. CaratLane’s products are considered as good gifting items for key customer occasions like birthdays and anniversaries, hence gifting continues to be a key business driver.
Mithun Sacheti, Founder and Managing Director of CaratLane commented, “CaratLane achieved a strong 38 per cent YoY growth in Q3, significantly outperforming the jewellery market, while keeping our operating and promotional expenses in check, driven by both repeat and new customers, on the back of our relentless drive to reduce friction from customer’s buying journey. This quarter has been really exciting for CaratLane as we have achieved many firsts in Q3,” he said.
“The Company has achieved profitability, our retail footprint has crossed the 100-store mark, and we recorded first-ever 100 crore+ month. Services like 24-hour delivery in nearly 7 cities, CaratLane LIVE, and Try at Home continue to take jewellery accessibility to a new level. We have launched 11 stores in this quarter, taking our brand to non-metro cities like Rourkela, Imphal, and Hisar which are under-served in terms of availability of modern designs, product quality, and customer experience. We will continue to build the sub 20k jewellery market, thereby ensuring that beautiful, modern designs are accessible to all while seizing a large market opportunity,” he concluded.
