BlueStone goes aggressive on retail expansion, opens 50th store in Mumbai

India’s leading D2C jewellery brand, BlueStone is riding high on its digital success. Doubling up on the recognition, they have recently launched their 50th store in the heart of India’s financial capital, Mumbai. The 600 sqft-wide store houses the most innovative collections and designs across different categories of earrings, rings, necklaces, mangalsutras, bangles etc. for women, men and children.

The exclusive feature of the store is its solitaire lounge with the most impeccable designs, and highly qualified store staff to help one pick the best BlueStone design. This strategy shows BlueStone’s intent to compete with the leading luxury boutiques across the country in terms of experience.

Speaking about the store launch, Gaurav Singh Kushwaha, Founder & CEO, BlueStone, said, “We began as a pure online jewellery brand in 2011 and around 2018, decided to foray into stores with our first omnichannel store at Pacific Mall, Delhi. Once we rolled out the store, the revenue from the same catchment became 10X.” This development happened as customers, who had experienced the products online, could now visit the store and make an instant purchase.

According to Gaurav, BlueStone is and shall always remain an online-first brand. This decision is to tap into the dynamic consumer behaviour of late. As multiple surveys and customer interactions by the brand inferred that  many of them loved exploring and buying the designs virtually, but some of them wanted to check out the product physically before purchasing.

The store roll-out plan was pre-decided and they have executed ahead of their original plan, given the resounding success of the earlier cohort of stores. The retailer has seen a 50% year-on-year jump from the first year itself in almost all the stores. The improved market sentiment has just bolstered their confidence in rolling out stores at an even faster rate.

Gaurav further added, “We have expanded rapidly and despite 2 lockdowns in the last 18 months, we have opened 34 stores with another 20 lined up for the next few months. We will be exiting FY22 with 100 stores a 1000 CR revenue run-rate.”

The brand believes that the Covid pandemic has tilted the scales in favour of omnichannel retail across categories and jewellery is no exception. Being one of the leaders in the online jewellery segment, BlueStone were the biggest beneficiary of this exodus towards online and omnichannel. Hence, while omnichannel store expansion shall continue to happen, the brand feels that the majority of the sale in the stores is originating on their website.

Written by Manoj Chakraborty

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