SMEs thrive: discover how one of Maharashtra's oldest furniture brands is growing online-: www.deekpay.com

Every growth story is full of revelations. At PayU, the story is especially awesome when a traditional business decides to adopt technology and open up online transactions.

The growth story of Ekbote Logs & Lumbers Pvt. Ltd. is a model for many offline businesses going online.

Ekbote's online business benefits from the support of Shoptimize, a proud partner of PayU.

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Ekbote Furniture is one of the oldest furniture manufacturing brands in Maharashtra and is known for its superior quality, outstanding growth and progressive furniture styles since 1960's.Ekbote has retail shops in Pune, Mumbai, Kolhapur, Bangalore and Chennai.

What prompted Ekbote to go online?

Ekbote Furniture has an early reputation in Maharashtra and has won the market with excellent quality, product price leadership and premium positioning. They tried their hand at e-commerce for six months but did not go all out. There were two main motivating factors that prompted them to go all out with their online presence to meet the competition.

The rise and initial success of purely online players such as Urban Ladder, Pepperfry and Fab Furnish, as well as the attention of venture capitalists, attests to the huge potential of the home furniture category online. Coupled with the fact that Ekbote Furniture, as a manufacturer, is at the higher end of the chain with better profit potential, this makes perfect economic sense.

However, traffic to Ekbote Furniture's retail shops continued to decline, and the high prices did not result in an increase in turnover even as traffic declined.

A new online strategy

As an offline business, Ekbote is full of questions about the following:

How do they collect payments?

What should I do if a customer requests a replacement product?

Who will help them with e-commerce?

The Ekbote online shop, powered by PayU and Shoptimize, transacted on day one, thanks to Shoptimize's pre-integrated PayU payment gateway.

Shoptimize created a top-notch e-commerce site in terms of design and technical functionality for Ekbote to take on competition from purely online startups.

They also introduced differentiating features such as 360-degree rotation of products to provide an "in-store" shopping experience for the end consumer. Other differentiating features include the introduction of a B2B sales channel, allowing Ekbote Furniture's existing dealers to act as online distributors through the same website.

Future growth plans

Ekbote's online expansion has been effective and has inspired them to reduce their dependence on offline channels and offer exclusive products and competitive pricing for online channels. They are currently investing heavily in both online and offline marketing and plan to continue to do so in the future. Initial results show that the new online strategy is hitting the bullseye.

PayU and Shoptimize are growth partners for SMEs and startups in India. To start your e-commerce journey today, self-refer here.