Sometime in 2021, when Nitika Mitla, co-founder of marketing studio Open This Way wanted to sell her Burberry and Fendi handbags, there weren’t many options for her to sell her luxury products through back then. Out of the multiple results she got from a Google search, Confidential Couture seemed an authentic website. The process stated for selling was easy too. Mitla sold her two bags on Confidential Couture. According to Mitla, though once sold it took some time to get the credit after constant following up with the accounts’ team, the overall experience of listing the products was easy.
Have you tried to sell your pre loved luxury hand bag? Or then have you tried to buy a pre-loved luxury hand bag? Either ways, it would have been a tough decision to make considering buying or selling pre-loved wasn’t a readily acceptable concept in India till a few years ago. It is exactly this uphill task of making pre-loved acceptable that Anvita Mehra and Jharna Ghaichandani, of Confidential Couture undertook a decade ago. However, it was only three and a half years ago that their idea exploded and today, Confidential Couture (CC) is on an upward course with a new addition to their business model, a brick and mortar concept store in New Delhi, the idea being to allow customers to touch and feel the products and overcome the first barrier of `I want to see it before I pay for it.’
The initial opportunity for a store came about in 2021 when post Covid Select City Walk, one of the larger malls in New Delhi, approached the company to do a physical pop-up store at their mall. Though CC didn’t have the kind of inventory that a pop-up required, it was a turning point for the company in terms of the kind of response and interaction the event garnered. “We were surprised to see the kind of sales we did from the pop-up. It didn’t lead to sales in that minute, but just to know, just to come and see, just to have that safety net that if something goes wrong then what am I going to do. I think that was our starting point in the whole retail space,” says Anvita Mehra, founder, Confidential Couture. “It was that leap that we needed to take,” she adds.
The first Confidential Couture concept store was opened in Select City Walk in Saket, New Delhi in July 2023. “When you have a physical space you are adding a lot to your customer in terms of trust and validation of your brand,” says Jharna Ghaichandani, co-founder, Confidential Couture. According to her, the store has had a great impact on the company’s online sales. Plans are to have a concept store in Mumbai too sometime in 2025.
Getting here has not been a cakewalk. While the first couple of years were the glory years, around 2016-2020, the duo started questioning if the company should really be running any more. In fact, 2020 was almost their breakdown. “In the middle phase, when you are around two to six years old, you realize that the hardships seem endless and we were struggling to meet ends. We couldn’t function as per the system as cash flows were haywire, we were bootstrapped, except that as we were in the luxury sector so it was a little bit more than we encountered,” says Ghaichandani. Post 2020 has been an upward journey. Somehow by the grace of God we stayed around and now everything is suddenly so different,” she adds.
Friends from university, Mehra and Ghaichandani stumbled upon the pre loved concept when as college students they had maxed out their budgets at that time. As the pre loved concept was prevalent in the West, their minds started clicking to bring the concept to India. However, it wasn’t all easy going. When it started in 2014, CC was a completely bootstrapped operation. The initial inventory comprised handbags from family members and close friends. Each item for sale would initially go through a basic in-house spa and then a more intense and holistic external spa. The first sale on the CC website was a friend’s Jimmy Choo golden handbag. Ghiachandani recalls the hand bag being in a fair condition, and after the spa it came back being an upper B, which was saleable. “The price point of ₹ 9,000 was fabulous at that time as you couldn’t possibly have bought a Jimmy Choo bag for within ₹ 10,000 then,” she says. The biggest learning for the duo from this first sale was how price sensitive and aspirational the market was. “Aspirational towards luxury, plus a great right price, both of them came together and allowed for the first golden sale for us,” she adds.
The initial years were a struggle. While the pre loved concept was then catching up in the West, people in the East were not looking at it as a more sustainable, cleaner way of living where you get rid of things that you don’t want. Besides the fact that there was no awareness of the pre-loved market in India, there was a stigma attached to buying something that was used by somebody else. There was resistance from the sellers as they felt embarrassed selling their items because it made them look like they had arrived at a place in life where they had to sell their luxury goods. “We struggled the first few years with the stigma that existed. I’m using past tense as I don’t see that anymore,” says Ghaichandani.
Why the name `Confidential Couture.’ According to Mehra, they wanted to make people understand that the whole process of buying and selling was confidential, “that the buyer and the seller don’t know each other was the most important point that we were trying to arrive at,” she says. Selling luxury goods is entirely based on trust and authenticity. One doesn’t overnight just pick up a bag worth Rs20 lakh from a website unless you trust it. According to Mehra, “The number of years, the level of transparency, the amount of education, the awareness that we have been able to create through our campaigns have led to this trust factor which is paramount in this business to be able to sell big ticket items and do bigger volumes,” she says.
When you get into an established industry, apart from certain challenges that come your way, one knows to a certain extent what to expect. As the pre loved industry was quite new in 2014, there was no set path for the company to follow. In a new industry, Mehra and Ghaichandani were trying to understand it, trying to educate people, and pave their own path. So marketing was one big tool that they used right from the start. While initially the focus was on traditional media, over the last five-six years, the focus has equally been towards digital as well. “Our biggest tool was working with people who were relevant in the fashion industry, or there was a luxe angle,” says Ghaichandani. “I couldn’t have been on just any page of a newspaper. I couldn’t just be in any magazine. The places we had to place ourselves in, the quality of marketing or the amount we spent, had to be right. We had to standardise it based on our industry,” she adds. As social media came about, bloggers became a part of the company’s journey.
Having started off with luxury handbags, today the website’s product range includes luxury watches and accessories too. The whole idea is to be able to sell the product. “There are many contributing factors to find a buyer. It takes a lot of time, research and marketing to reach the right customer,” says Mehra.
When the company started out, there was a clear distinction between the buyer and the seller. However, today there is no such distinction. Today CC’s product category is so varied with both high ticket and low ticket products, the company engages with all age groups.
Technically, CC is the middle point between the buyer and the seller. Buyers are mainly from the metros of Delhi, Mumbai, and Bengaluru. However the big learning was knowing that customers in tier 2 cities such as Ranchi are swiping their cards for luxury bags. “They are not so small towns but they lack access,” says Ghaichandani. Another interesting find was that the North East cities of Kolkata and Imphal are a fair market as there are people over there with an interest in international luxury but are unable to have any close by access. “The fact that luxury goods are finding their way to these markets says that there is potential beyond the metros,” she adds. According to brand strategy consultant Deepika Gehani, “A platform such as CC can be an aspirational space for buyers who don’t have the budget or access to luxury brands yet. There is always a beginning,” says Gehani.
Many factors contribute towards deriving the correct price – the brand itself, the brand awareness of that particular brand, the model that it is, the year on year brand appreciation. Some items are classics, so pricing of these items work differently compared to other brands. For instance, say somebody bought a classic handbag six years ago, the company is likely to make money on it today giving the year on your brand increase in value as the same product six years later in retail itself has appreciated six times.
Many fakes also find their way to CC. So a two layered authenticity process in undertaken. The first authenticity check is done in-house. This is layered with another round of authenticity check from a US based authenticity check company. The item is then certified with an authenticity certificate. “Every purchase from the website gets a certificate of authenticity guarantee which is a money back and lifetime paper from us if you ever come back and there is a question. So far, touch wood, in our history of 10 years that has never been a concern to us. As I said in the beginning, authenticity is the most important thing in this business,” says Mehra.
As the market has grown over the last decade new players such as Luxepolis, Luxury Pop, Re-Tag, The Luxury Change, My Luxury Bargain, to mention a few, have entered the segment. “We realized that having competitors in our industry actually worked to our advantage, because the industry itself starts to become more acceptable,” says Ghaichandani.
Ghaichandani’s learning has been that though the company started as a startup, the start-up mentality does not work in the luxury space. “If you need to survive in the sector you have to spend money. It’s the quality of our store, the way your office is set up, and the area where your office is set up. You have to be of a certain standard,” she says.
Mehra and Ghaichandani have grown the business completely bootstrapped, and not gone the venture capital route at all. “We obviously want to, it’s not something that we are opposed to, but it is something that we want to be at that level where when that money comes then it goes towards strategy rather than be just money,” says Mehra. With the difficult part behind the duo, it is all about looking ahead now.