Fashion.
When it comes to embracing the free spirit of fashion in India, there are very few names in the fashion and apparel industry that come to mind.
THE HOUSE OF RARE is one such brand that has become synonymous with authentic and contemporary designer wear for men and women, creating their own space in the premium and luxury fashion and apparel industry.
THE HOUSE OF RARE, the design house known for its exclusive collections, Rare Rabbit (menswear) and Rareism (womenswear), is a subsidiary of “Radhamani Textiles Private Ltd”, one of the most valued apparel manufacturing companies of India with an annual manufacturing capacity of 2 million and 6 million in Bangladesh annually.
The brand aims at becoming the most admired fashion brand in the country and across Asia by 2025 by establishing Rare Rabbit and Rareism as premium brands that introduce the newest trends in the market at competitive pricing while selling them in a premium environment.
Wanting an eCommerce platform that could scale with their goals, THE HOUSE OF RARE chose Shopify and we couldn’t be any happier.
Establishing a global brand online with Shopify
With thirty years of experience in the fashion and apparel industry, working with leading global brands, the parent company, Radhamani Textiles Private Ltd, decided to launch their own brand in the market and started conceptualising Rare Rabbit - a premium brand for men's fashion wear in 2015.
The brand launched its exclusive collection on Koovs first. The European style and detailed design of each product listed on the site was quick to grab attention and Rare Rabbit soon established a following of its own, nudging the brand to launch Rareism for women’s wear in 2019, making it even more important for them to set up their online store.
Starting out on a competing platform, they moved to Shopify in 2019, owing to the ease of store setup and scalability. Unlike other eCommerce platforms, Shopify did not require the brand to look into hiring an experienced in-house tech team to manage the functioning of their online store site. Shopify is able to ensure speed, eradicate the occurrences of technical glitches and also provides easy scaling with a host of plug and play applications available for different use cases.
“Shopify offered us a simple plug and play online store setup platform. All we had to do was focus on our branding, how we wanted the store to look and then set it up using the easy-to-use advanced customizations available on the platform itself. With easy integrations and apps available on Shopify, we’re also further focusing on improving the shopping experience we offer to customers without having to worry about our site not functioning at any given point of time.”
Pulkit Verma
Ecommerce Head
THE HOUSE OF RARE
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While the focus remains on scaling their online store sales, the brand’s products are available across 40 exclusive brand outlets as of today. Their premium collections, Rare Rabbit and Rareism, are also available at multi-brand outlets under the name of THE HOUSE OF RARE, to reach more customers.
THE HOUSE OF RARE started out as a brand focusing on fashion wear for men. It moved into the women’s fashion market and established a name as strong for being a brand that’s more mature, yet authentic. The brand plans on further expanding its catalogue of products to reach more customers across different target segments and Shopify is glad to be a part of its journey.
But a big part of offering a seamless shopping experience is about how easy it is for consumers to complete a purchase on the online store. That’s where Shopify’s one-click integration with Razorpay comes in.
By using the Shopify-Razorpay integration, THE HOUSE OF RARE is able to accept payments via the Razorpay Payment Gateway. It enables them to accept payments via debit card, credit card, bet banking (supports 3D secure), UPI and other supported digital wallets.
The plugin offers seamless integration, allowing their customers to pay on the store without being redirected to another page, further enhancing their shopping experience with THE HOUSE OF RARE. To see how the integration works, you can test it on the demo store here.
Simplifying online payments with Shopify-Razorpay integration
The easier it is for an online shopper to make a transaction, the more likely they are to move from adding products to the cart to completing a purchase. That’s why it is important to offer a host of payment methods that appeal to the typical online shopper. This includes offering them the ability to pay via credit cards, debit cards, net banking, UPI and other digital wallets.
A customer with the intention to buy should never drop off due to lack of his preferred payment method. But to set up multiple payment methods manually can be a time-consuming and overwhelming task. The Shopify-Razorpay integration makes it a breeze for stores to make their online payments seamless.
Razorpay was recommended to THE HOUSE OF RARE when they were seeking out a smart payment solution to be able to take international orders as well. The brand further went on to explore the experience other online stores had with the integration between Shopify and Razorpay, finding positive reviews on the seamless integration.
“As our online store started to accept more orders from across the globe, we wanted a payment solution that would make it easier for our customers to complete purchases. We wanted to be absolutely sure that the shoppers got a secure platform to transact over and never had to leave a product they liked just because they didn’t find a payment gateway that suited them. After doing our research on eCommerce payment solutions, we decided to use Razorpay on our store - especially owing to the easy integration it had with Shopify, and its ability to tackle international orders as well.”
By implementing the Shopify-Razorpay integration on their store, THE HOUSE OF RARE was able to see an increase in international conversions.
But as more orders started to come in, there was also an increased probability of fraud orders coming in. Manually verifying addresses or customer orders was too tedious, but avoiding the issue while scaling globally was a no-no for the brand.
To prevent a high return to origin (RTO) rate due to incorrect addresses or fake orders being placed on the store, Razorpay further recommended adding their newest e-commerce offering, Thirdwatch to their Shopify store.
“Since THE HOUSE OF RARE is in a premium fashionwear space, it is important for us to track orders that have a high return vulnerability. We were looking for a solution that would easily work with our payments solution - irrespective of the gateway chosen by the shopper. Razorpay then introduced us to their AI-powered RTO & fraud detection solution, Thirdwatch, that could be added to our Shopify store with a single click.”
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Minimizing return to origin (RTO) with Thirdwatch
On average, online stores witness an RTO rate of about 30% on the orders placed. These RTO orders indicate items that are returned to the warehouse without reaching the customer.
This meant losing a lot of resources on enabling the order for delivery from the warehouse - right from packaging to forward and return logistics costs along with blocked inventory costs.
Since THE HOUSE OF RARE was already using the Shopify-Razorpay integration to enable online payments, they added Thirdwatch to their eCommerce stack to combat high RTO rates. Thirdwatch is an e-commerce solution by Razorpay which is tailored to suit the Indian market and has helped many ecommerce businesses to successfully reduce their RTO and increase the number of successful order deliveries.
Once Thirdwatch was installed on THE HOUSE OF RARE Shopify store, the AI-powered engine was instantly able to capture 300+ parameters from the store’s data. This would then be processed to flag an order with a high risk of RTO as red and low-risk as green. With this solution added to their Shopify store, RareRabbit was able to achieve the following:
- Identify orders which have a high probability of RTO to enable timely cancellation
- Detect incomplete/ fake addresses
- Flag incorrect contact information (email ID/mobile number)
- Speak to customers and update the addresses before order shipping
- Detect fraudulent orders to cancel them before shipping purchases
- Predict impulse purchase patterns with high RTO rates
Using this Thirdwatch App on top of the Shopify-Razorpay integration, THE HOUSE OF RARE was able to reduce their RTO rate.
“Thirdwatch has helped us reduce RTO by flagging risky orders. We’re looking at a deeper integration with Thirdwatch to further reduce the RTO rate across all the channels. While we’re still in the learning phase of how consumers make purchases and what we can do to combat high RTO, we’ve already implemented an OTP system and are looking into giving customers a second call to confirm orders to turn COD purchases to prepaid. Owing to the COVID-19 outbreak, this has become a priority for us as things begin to normalize in the eCommerce space.”
With Thirdwatch on your Shopify store, you can also send automated messages via WhatsApp and SMS to the buyers of the red-flagged orders. This adds an additional layer of confirmation before you approve the orders for shipping.
Using the timely flagging of high-risk orders and customer data associated with them, the Shopify-Thirdwatch integration has also enabled THE HOUSE OF RARE to implement customer recovery strategies like offering direct discounts to shoppers via payment links to incentivize them to make the payment upfront. You can learn more about the Thirdwatch Shopify app here.
New to Shopify and want to tackle RTO right from the start? Get 45 days free trial of Thirdwatch app to reduce RTOs. Install the app on your store and fill out your business details here to avail the offer.
Scaling globally with Shopify
As THE HOUSE OF RARE gears up to scale their online store to conquer wider markets across the globe, the seamless solution integrations offered by Shopify are ensuring a robust infrastructure for the brand to grow on.
“As a more experienced brand in the fashion industry, it’s important for us to establish THE HOUSE OF RARE in our current market and at the same time, move into other spaces. But to make sure that our brand experience remains authentic and true to what we stand for, we also need to ensure our online store supports our vision. With Shopify, we’ve been able to scale our efforts easily and the strong partner ecosystem has also been of great help.”
Want to know more about the brand? Visit www.thehouseofrare.com today!