Woodland, the outdoors and lifestyle(footwear, apparel and accessories) brand, has stopped shipments to e-marketplace operators including Amazon and Flipkart.
It is understood that pricing disparity created by the e-commerce platforms with discounts and offers has affected Woodland's brick and mortar store sales.
Confirming the development, Harkirat Singh, managing director, Woodland, said the company has been selling to the e-marketplace operators and everything was going good.
"But all of a sudden, in the last two-three months we saw e-marketplace operators giving a lot of discounts and offers because of competition between them. This has created problems and hence we have stopped their shipments," said Singh, adding all orders (from e-marketplace operators) have been put on hold since over a month now.
While Amazon, Flipkart and Snapdeal did not respond to dna queries, a Jabong spokesperson said they aren't facing any such shipment issues from Woodland.
dna has learnt that executives from Amazon and Flipkart are in talks with Woodland management to sort out the matter and restart shipments.
Flipkart executives have met Woodland management a week ago while Amazon officials held meetings earlier this week.
Singh said that talks are currently on with the e-retailers and that Woodland has sought a written commitment from Amazon and Flipkart on the discounting issue.
"We are hoping to sort out this matter in the coming months," said Singh.
On its part, to ensure the discounts and offers don't impact Woodland's core business, that is, offline sales, the management is in the process of introducing new designs and collections that will be sold exclusively through the online channels. "This will help create clear differentiation for our offerings on the online and offline channels," he said.
Woodland also sells from its own website. Growing at 25-30% annually, the company is expecting to close the current fiscal with overall revenues of Rs 1,300 crore.
"Sales from offline stores will continue to contribute around 90% to overall revenues," said Singh, adding rest 10% come from online sales.
The company currently retails its merchandise through 500 stores in addition to selling merchandise (footwear) from multi-brand outlets. Woodland expects to open 60-70 new stores annually wherein a store measuring 2,000 square feet and above will call for an investment of over Rs 2 crore, while the smaller stores will cost less depending on the size. The company plans to invest Rs 30-40 crore in expanding manufacturing capacity
