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December - 2014 - Special issue > Brand of the year - e-Commerce

Pepperfry.com:The Numero Uno Destination for Online Furniture & Home Products/Think Furniture & Home Products. Think Pepperfry.com

Anamika Sahu
Wednesday, January 28, 2015
Anamika Sahu
We all have tried, tested and many a times failed to procure the best quality and deals in furniture and home products. For some, global furniture giants don't fit their pocket, and for others, the quality of small manufacturers doesn't fit their taste. While we all go gaga over the available choices of furniture in various stores, we itch our head hard to find them all in one place so that we don't have to burn our fuel roaming across the city to buy the one piece of furniture that suits our need. Owing with a commitment to fulfill this huge gap of the industry, Pepperfry.com came into existence in January 2012. The company grew leaps and bounds in this short journey of over two years and has successfully parked itself in the minds of the people as a brand built on three core value propositions of providing a wide variety of products at competitive prices while developing great experience.

"There were exiting gaps in one or more of these value propositions and thus, we chartered our journey to build our business based on these propositions in a strong manner which is reflected in our business growth," says a proud Kashyap Vadapalli, Chief Marketing Officer, Pepperfry.com. Today, this Mumbai headquartered company has extended its presence through new offices in Delhi and Bangalore. Pepperfry.com started its journey by selling just 150 pieces of furniture a month but today, the company delivers over 15,000 pieces each month. To its credit, Pepperfry.com has shipped 100,000 pieces of furniture till date. This was possible due to the differentiated product range and value proposition to establish its leadership in the furniture and home products segment. And not to ignore its strong supply-side which has the most exhaustive selection of designs and price-points available in the country today.

The company has put in place best-in-class practices in the service eco-system across logistics and post-sales support. But for a specialized vertical like furniture, large item distribution poses a huge challenge. "We overcame this challenge by pioneering our own 'Large Item Distribution model' which hasn't been attempted by any other company in the past. By making significant investment in this area, we have built a hub and spoke model that covers a majority of our orders," explains Kashyap. The Large Item Distribution model enables Pepperfry.com for door delivery of large furniture items in over 127 cities and towns across the country with an unprecedented accuracy at lowest costs in comparison to the industry. The company operates a managed marketplace and its investments have been towards controlling all aspects of customer experience starting from pre-sales merchant listing to post-sale logistics and customer service. This has equipped the company to offer a standardized and superior buying experience and build trust among the customers. To some, these might seem miniature, but these efforts have paid off well making Pepperfry.com the numerouno destination for Online Home & Furniture shopping.

Today, the company has over 75,000 exhaustive selections of products from over 1000 small merchants and more than 200 brands in the country across categories on its site offering an array of choices for the customers in various designs, materials, finishes and others. Its end-to-end sourcing process enables the company to get differentiated supply from non-net-savvy small businesses while ensuring high merchandizing quality. In furniture alone Pepperfry.com has tie-ups with brands including Godrej Interio, Nilkamal, Spacewood, @Home, Durian, and others along with 150+ traditional non-branded furniture manufacturers. Apart from the plethora of choices, the company offers a host of unique services too to enhance the overall furniture shopping experience of customers by offering free shipping and installation on all furniture items. There is also a 'carpenter on call' service in select 30 cities including Mumbai, Delhi, Bangaloe, Pune, Chennai and others to help assemble and fix furniture bought from Pepperfry.

With its rapid growth rate, the company is quite definite to earmark Rs.1000 crore by end of 2015. This will include ramping up supply chain, logistics, operations and work force which will multiply several folds and product offerings to get double-fold through national and regional brand partnerships. Pepperfry will also be investing heavily to enhance its supply chain due to which, the last mile delivery will see a tremendous growth reaching out to over 400 towns and cities by December 2015. "While the market for other online shopping products has opened up, we still have to roll out in home furniture space. This requires building continuous awareness among customers. We will be opening Experience Centers in key cities by the first quarter of 2015," asserts Kashyap. These Experience Centers will be engaged in offering design consultancy and customization services to customers.


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Reader's comments(2)
1:Customer service is supposed to be there to make things better for us, but sometimes it\'s the exact opposite. I would like to share my experience with Pepperfry furniture...yes, like the name specify, when you fry pepper, your eyes burns. That\'s what happened with me. I bought a four door wardrobe in Nov 2015(product link-https://www.pepperfry.com/four-door-ward robe-with-storage-shelves-in-chocolate-beech- finish-by-mintwud-1253330.html). When I got the delivery, it was packed beautifully and I was exited. Then next day the carpenter guy(sent by pepperfry) came to my place to install it. That\'s when I came to know about the facts and the difference between our traditional style man made furniture and these kind of good looking(mind it) furniture which is surrounded by very high maintenance and caring rules along with their insubstantial attachments. The rear plywood sheet of the wardrobe is literally like the cardboard which I used to take with me to my examination hall to support my sheets while writing my papers(at time my father used to do book binding with the same kind of cardboard to safeguard my costly books). Imagine how weak it would be. I still remember my childhood when me and my siblings used to play around my home furniture and use to jump from one to another. They are still firm and had tolerated all our stupidity(pouring water, scratching with toys, playing as drum). I should say that it is still alive and well usable with all our childhood sweet memories. Coming back to my bad experience with so called pepperfry furniture, this wardrobe still got a place in my room just to avoid any further hassles of uninstalling, scheduling a return pickup, seek refund etc. I have very limited to to spent with all these things and I am a kind of person who wants to keep the life as simple as possible. I thought may be in future, I will call some carpenter and get the wardrobe assembled again in traditional ways such as hard ply wood, better locks and joints etc. Now, after six months, I saw white spots all around the wardrobe, spoiling my stuffs inside too. I found that it is catching fungus and even after I tried to clean it with dry cloth, its come back very next day. The look of the wardrobe it gone extremely bad and it is just giving me extra pain of cleaning the wardrobe and my stuffs (see the images- https://drive.google.com/open?id=0B6-XYQhSLNW 9Q0FaSGVwQTA5QTQ). It became useless in just six months. Thank god that I did not put any extra money or efforts to make this wardrobe better. However, I would regret that I wasted my money in such a waste product. Regarding the service, as the wardrobe was in 12 months warranty, I wrote to them with current images. All they have to say \"sorry\" we can not help you as the fungus is not covered under warranty. On top of that, they are suggesting me that I should keep the wardrobe in dry place(my answer was- It is placed in my bedroom and it made sure that it never gets in touch with water, now what else you want me to do, shall I keep it to my terrace in sun light everyday!!) His another rebuttal on warranty coverage was that it covers the wood condition and attachment complaints which not so true as I was complaining about the wood quality only. Regarding the attachments, the guy who installed my wardrobe, strictly told me not to move the wardrobe from one place to other as it is may get apart. I should call the pepperfry guys in case I want to shift it from one room to another. In that case, it would never get any attachment issue. Now, I demand a fair response from them for the warranty coverage and the quality assurance. Even the rebuttal given by the customer service representative, that I should take my wardrobe for sunbath to keep it dry, was very disappointing and senseless. I am not saying that all of their product would have all these issues, but what I experienced, I am sharing with all users to prevent them from these kind of expensive and attractive marketing strategies to misguide people like us. They are taking undue advantages on the basis of ease services like effortless selection, delivery and installation of furniture however, I got the lesson in hard way. Traditional ways of furnishing is all the better and durable. Hope this would be an eyeopener for many users.
Posted by: Sudarshan Kumar - 01st Sep 2016
2:Customer service is supposed to be there to make things better for us, but sometimes it\'s the exact opposite. I would like to share my experience with Pepperfry furniture...yes, like the name specify, when you fry pepper, your eyes burns. That\'s what happened with me. I bought a four door wardrobe in Nov 2015(product link-https://www.pepperfry.com/four-door-ward robe-with-storage-shelves-in-chocolate-beech- finish-by-mintwud-1253330.html). When I got the delivery, it was packed beautifully and I was exited. Then next day the carpenter guy(sent by pepperfry) came to my place to install it. That\'s when I came to know about the facts and the difference between our traditional style man made furniture and these kind of good looking(mind it) furniture which is surrounded by very high maintenance and caring rules along with their insubstantial attachments. The rear plywood sheet of the wardrobe is literally like the cardboard which I used to take with me to my examination hall to support my sheets while writing my papers(at time my father used to do book binding with the same kind of cardboard to safeguard my costly books). Imagine how weak it would be. I still remember my childhood when me and my siblings used to play around my home furniture and use to jump from one to another. They are still firm and had tolerated all our stupidity(pouring water, scratching with toys, playing as drum). I should say that it is still alive and well usable with all our childhood sweet memories. Coming back to my bad experience with so called pepperfry furniture, this wardrobe still got a place in my room just to avoid any further hassles of uninstalling, scheduling a return pickup, seek refund etc. I have very limited to to spent with all these things and I am a kind of person who wants to keep the life as simple as possible. I thought may be in future, I will call some carpenter and get the wardrobe assembled again in traditional ways such as hard ply wood, better locks and joints etc. Now, after six months, I saw white spots all around the wardrobe, spoiling my stuffs inside too. I found that it is catching fungus and even after I tried to clean it with dry cloth, its come back very next day. The look of the wardrobe it gone extremely bad and it is just giving me extra pain of cleaning the wardrobe and my stuffs (see the images- https://drive.google.com/open?id=0B6-XYQhSLNW 9Q0FaSGVwQTA5QTQ). It became useless in just six months. Thank god that I did not put any extra money or efforts to make this wardrobe better. However, I would regret that I wasted my money in such a waste product. Regarding the service, as the wardrobe was in 12 months warranty, I wrote to them with current images. All they have to say \"sorry\" we can not help you as the fungus is not covered under warranty. On top of that, they are suggesting me that I should keep the wardrobe in dry place(my answer was- It is placed in my bedroom and it made sure that it never gets in touch with water, now what else you want me to do, shall I keep it to my terrace in sun light everyday!!) His another rebuttal on warranty coverage was that it covers the wood condition and attachment complaints which not so true as I was complaining about the wood quality only. Regarding the attachments, the guy who installed my wardrobe, strictly told me not to move the wardrobe from one place to other as it is may get apart. I should call the pepperfry guys in case I want to shift it from one room to another. In that case, it would never get any attachment issue. Now, I demand a fair response from them for the warranty coverage and the quality assurance. Even the rebuttal given by the customer service representative, that I should take my wardrobe for sunbath to keep it dry, was very disappointing and senseless. I am not saying that all of their product would have all these issues, but what I experienced, I am sharing with all users to prevent them from these kind of expensive and attractive marketing strategies to misguide people like us. They are taking undue advantages on the basis of ease services like effortless selection, delivery and installation of furniture however, I got the lesson in hard way. Traditional ways of furnishing is all the better and durable. Hope this would be an eyeopener for many users.
Posted by: Sudarshan Kumar - 01st Sep 2016
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