Socktail.com
Socktail.com - An answer to all your furniture and home improvement needs.
If you are planning to refurnish your home, socktail.com is the site to visit. A new entrant in the furniture market, socktail targets the booming online furniture and home décor domain. Socktail not only offers a rich catalog of home, office, outdoor and restaurant furniture, but also provides great tips on home improvement & furniture care.
When and how was Socktail conceptualized?
The idea of socktail popped up when I started renovating my home. There was not even a single website in India where I could find reliable home design ideas, says co-founder Alpana Gupta, a law graduate and a mother of one kid. The final aim is to provide a platform where people can come and find everything related to home decor and furnishing. We have started with furniture and soon we will launch the home decor and home improvement section. In the next stage, we will introduce the facility of hiring related services as well. e.g. ability to explore the portfolios of interior decorators, furniture designers & landscape artists and also be able to hire them, adds co-founder Vidhya, a graduate from MIT, Chennai.
Co-founder
Tell us a little bit more about your products and services.
Socktail is an e-tailer of home, office and outdoor furniture. It offers a wide range of rustic, industrial, modern and solid wood furniture along with great tips for furniture care and home improvement. The company has created a niche for itself in the home furniture segment and keeps its customers happy and delighted with its ace designs, affordable pricing, pan-India shipment and excellent customer service.
What problem you are solving?
We are trying to fill a void in the furniture and home décor market. In India, this industry is still in its nascent stage and there is no quality website to cater to all the needs of home improvement and design. The idea is to build a platform where professionals (interior designers, landscape artists etc.) can contribute and people can buy.
Key services offered?
Currently we are selling all types of furniture as well as offering design ideas and furniture care tips. Very soon, we will launch home décor and home improvement products as well. In the second phase, we will introduce related services where professionals will be able to create their portfolios and users will be able to hire them by checking their past projects and user reviews.
What were the challenges you faced initially and how did you overcome them?
Challenges were many but the biggest one was delivery. The delivery of furniture is the biggest problem the industry is facing. Though there are many players delivering heavy goods, it is very difficult to avoid transit damages. So, to overcome that problem, we have planned our packaging such that the damages can be minimized. We train all our vendors to package the products as per our standards.
Currently we are working on setting up our own warehouses where we can package products ourselves and dispatch. In the future, we will set up our own logistics facility to ensure faster and a better delivery.
Technology Used?
We have built an ecommerce platform with social sharing and engagement features using PHP and My SQL.
Our platform is robust enough to handle 100s of thousands of simultaneous user activities.
Main Competitors?
Our main competitors are Pepperfry, Fabfurnish and Urbanladder.
Amount of funding till date and the funding type*
Currently we are working on enriching our product catalog by getting more sellers onboard. We will start approaching investors soon.
The Team
Vidhya - A graduate from MIT, Chennai
Alpana Gupta - A law graduate
Market Addressed
Considering broadband penetration and online shopping habits, we are targeting the younger crowd from Metros and Tier 1 cities. Most of the traffic we are getting today are from these places. But the potential is multifold considering that internet access is making great inroads into tier 2 and 3 cities. With a single click, we want anyone living in any corner in India to make an order.
