Amazon X WYN EP 5

Force Lighting has successfully transitioned from a traditional brick-and-mortar business to an online marketplace. By leveraging the power of the internet, they have seen their online sales surpass their offline sales and have been able to reach customers all over India and even internationally. The key factors that have helped them grow their business include understanding the Indian customer, designing their own products, and providing availability of stocks and customization options. They have also faced challenges in scaling their business, such as ensuring quality control and avoiding bad reviews online. Overall, their journey of taking their brand online has been a success, and they continue to adapt to the ever-changing digital ecosystem. Hello and welcome to Open for Business series on the Inspiring Thought Podcast. In this series, I bring you stories of some of the homegrown small and medium businesses. These stories are representative of the countless small and medium businesses in the country that play a key role in the overall economic growth of India. By celebrating these businesses, I hope to inspire you to start and scale your business. In each episode, you will hear the stories of building businesses, strategies and innovations that are helping these brands to grow their revenue and impact the lives of people associated with them. I'm your host Vijay Gautam and in today's episode, how Kunal Rothagi from Force Lighting took his three generations old lighting business to the next level by leveraging the power of the internet. Kunal Rothagi launched the brand Force Lighting in 2010. This is the third generation family run business since 1950. They work with artisans all over the country who use locally sourced raw materials. They design, manufacture and supply decorative lighting across the country and are one of the early adopters of online marketplaces. Today, they have an offline presence in Delhi NCR with three stores while their online sales surpasses offline sales. Let's hear it from Kunal on what clicked for them. Kunal, welcome to the show. Thank you, Vijay. It's nice to be in the show. Kunal, share with us a bit about Force Lighting. How long have you been in the market and what's been the traction so far? Okay, we have been in this retail business basically way to see since 1950 and it's only been in 2012 started by my grandfather and I'm the third generation. And when I came after my studies, I had a habit of buying everything online and that was very new to the Indian market. So I just thought, okay, if in other markets people are buying online, why shouldn't we try? We have everything. We have the back end. Why not just give it a try? And the industry is booming at that time in India. So we started listing the products. We created a website. We started listing products on different platforms. The response was good, slow, but it was then eventually we started seeing volumes coming. We got more confident and we just thought of, you know, just pushing it more. So it's been a wonderful journey and still is. Interesting. So lighting products like chandelier and lamps are fragile products. What are some of the challenges you faced in the production and delivery of these products? There were challenges, but like I said, we are in this industry for a long time and we have been sending materials to all over India. That was pre-online era, I would say. But we knew how to pack, but we didn't know how to formalize it in an organized way. So we had a team set up for that formalized things on how to pack each step that we need to take. Same thing, but more a noted down way of doing things. So anyone, any new person comes and he can, you know, do the same thing, follow the same procedure. And the way we do packing is we use a lot of fillers, paper grass, and just so the product doesn't move. The only thing what we found is no matter what you use, bubble, thermocol, whatever you want to use, the trick is the product should not move or should not rattle in the box. It should be like a frozen thing. Imagine something frozen. Just stay in that place. It will not break at all. So our breakage is less than 1%. We hardly get any complaints from our customers. Whether we do it for any, whether we do it for retail packing or courier, surface transport, it doesn't matter. And we said, we do the same kind of packing, can we send it to our showrooms in Hyderabad, Bangalore, anywhere, or to any customer. Only formalizing things and procedure, making procedure for everyone to understand that was a challenge. Those are really great insights Kunal. Having a defined system for anybody to follow, definitely ensures the reputable result. Like you said, less than 1% breakage rate for the products like lights is really commendable. What's been your journey of taking products online and how adopting digital has helped your brand? The journey is not complete. I don't think it will ever be complete. And we are trying our best to adapt to ever-changing digital ecosystem. Because the technology changes very fast. But there are e-commerce platforms like Amazon has helped us reach far corners of India and the world. We do get few orders from other countries as well, which we are happy about. And that's the thing about technology is that, I mean, just by sitting in one warehouse, you actually won't know where we are sitting. But a product is everywhere. We have reached to every corner with the kind of online platforms that they are providing us. So with that, we get more volume and more reach. In fact, our online sales surpassed our offline sales, which is, I would say, more than double. So at this point, I don't have a word for it, but I cannot think forward, but it totally slipped. Initially, we were more focused on retail outlets and online platform was more of like advertising. We'll get few orders from here and there. But now, it's the other way around. It's more we are focusing on online sales and having a showroom is like an advertisement. You have a store in some cities, it's good to have. It's a good to have. It's not a requirement. It's just a presence. What I would say, what something of, you know, you look and go and see the product, but actually you will buy it online. I go and see the product, like we all are doing it. I think when we buy other things, we go see the product, but we actually are buying it from our homes at night, whenever we are comfortable. So that's what happens. That's a great insight. And I think the brands that use the omnichannel approach of being present offline and also online are probably going to win in the longer term because online gives you the ease of ordering from your home. And it's great to hear how going online, your brand was not only able to grow, but also surpass offline sales. And this is the last episode of our series. And with every episode, my belief in the power of taking brand online has only strengthened. I was surprised to hear that fragile products often considered that people want to buy offline is also something that people are shopping online, which is interesting, right? And this is a great validation for a lot of brands still thinking of going online and leveraging the wide distribution platforms like Amazon also. So Kunal, can you share with us three key factors that have really helped you grow your business? There are many. I would say first is understanding. We started with in India, understanding Indian customers. And we all know Indian customers want everything. They want quality. They want their price conscious, everything. And quality, they want best designer products. They want everything best. So we design our own products. So our design detects what we all like. And we have something that every Indian would like in their house. That's one. And the kind of material what we use, that's the second one. And there are a few other like availability of stocks and customization and spare parts. There are so many. I wouldn't say availability is also a key factor for us. And providing spares to our customers when something goes wrong. For example, we Indians, we like to take care of our products. We hang a chandelier or a wall light for years. Something breaks, I need, I will not replace it with a new one. I would like, you know, I would like, you know, maybe if I can get a spare part of that same one, that would be very nice. So we are able to provide that to our customers. Also, could you share with our listeners the biggest challenges you have faced while scaling your generational business and some of the lessons that you've learned from that? The biggest challenge was to have, you know, well-defined procedures. And we didn't have a QC team, which is very important when you are doing sales on any online platform. Because customers are not there to check the product. They are not in front of you. They haven't seen the product. So what you are showing them on pictures, they should get to see the same product. So having QC team placed and trained them, which is useful to mitigate things like return, cases like return, product is not matching the picture. And we don't want bad reviews. That's, I think, the biggest scary part of online platform. So customer, you know, they have, we all are very vocal online. So if I buy something, I know I would like to see, you know, good reviews, so more people can buy. So for that, I need to send a good product. To send a good product, I need to, you know, make sure whatever I'm showing them, they should receive the exact same thing. So that was a big challenge, but now it's a part of our nature. We just do it. It's been 12 years and we are pretty good at it. It's interesting how you say that being an online seller, it's important to ensure that there are no bad reviews. And you mentioned that send them the product that you have shown in the image that you posted in listing page. So quick tips that you want to share to other online sellers who might be listening to avoid bad reviews. Provide bad reviews is the only way you can get is you are not showing, you are not sending what you are showing. And the description should, whatever you want to send, just be true to it. If you are selling anything, the material, the description should specify because you are not there to explain them over the phone, over the counter, nothing. So they are reading, they are seeing, and they are reading. And whatever you want to put, just put over there. And that's the item they should get. Material, color, whatever you want. Just describe the product nicely and to the point. No embellishment required. No fancy word, nothing. Just this is very basic. So what's next for fast lighting? What are some of the goals that you're looking at achieving in the next few years? We are good in B2C sales. And it's been very long since 1950s. We are doing retail sales to B2C. Even online platform, we are focused on B2C. But now, like I said, because of the reach, we do get some orders from other countries. So we would like to have a team to start only B2B sales and capture more international markets. That's the plan for now. Super. All the best with everything that you're doing Kunal. And thank you so much for being on the show today. Thank you. It's been really nice. Thank you. Thanks again for listening to this episode. If you enjoyed listening to this, share this story with people in your network. You never know, this story might just inspire them to start their own business. I hope this series inspired you to chase your dream, build products and build your own business. Now, it's your turn to go out there and do something inspiring.