New Delhi: Online fashion retailer Myntra sold goods worth more than ₹ 90 crore during its single-day sale earlier this month, underscoring the threat that e-commerce firms pose to offline stores such as Shoppers Stop Ltd and Lifestyle International Pvt Ltd .

Myntra had heavily advertised its sale across all TV, print and the Internet, terming it the ‘end of reason’ sale and offering discounts as high as 90% across apparel, footwear and accessories. It was initially planned to be held over two days but Myntra, bought by Flipkart last May for more than $330 million, was forced to end the sale on the first day because of higher-than-expected demand.

The site had a target of generating gross merchandise value (GMV), or the value of goods sold, of ₹ 100 crore in two days, but achieved this target on the first day, three people familiar with the matter said. GMV doesn’t account for discounts so Myntra could have registered actual sales of anywhere between ₹ 30-60 crore.

According to one of the three people cited above, (all spoke on condition of anonymity) the demand was so high that the firm ran out of stock in some categories and was forced to source some goods from its parent Flipkart and offline vendors.

“Myntra wanted to make sure that no orders were cancelled due to unavailability of the products and hence products were procured from different offline and online channels such as Jabong and Snapdeal," said one of the people.

Myntra declined to comment.

Mint reported on 29 December that heavy discounting and massive advertising by online retailers such as Myntra, Jabong and Amazon had forced offline stores to start their end-of-season sales much earlier than usual.

Brands such as Puma, Woodland and Allen Solly started offering discounts and promotions by the middle of December, weeks before the traditional start of the end-of-season sale in early January. Department stores such as Shoppers Stop, Lifestyle and Central were seen offering discounts on select brands in December.

Unlike a year ago when retailers went on sale only three times in a year, 2014 saw retailers hold sales almost every quarter to respond to massive discounting by online retailers.

According to an April 2014 report by venture capital firm Accel Partners, online spending on apparel and fashion may increase to $2.8 billion by 2016 from $559 million in 2013.

Until this year, apparel stores hadn’t been nearly as badly hit by the e-commerce boom as their electronics counterparts, partly because shirts, trousers and skirts are much more varied than standardized technology products such as laptops and mobile phones. But online retailers have been increasing their focus on apparel as it offers significantly higher margins than books or electronics.

Myntra reported revenue of ₹ 441.6 crore for the year ended March 2014, an increase of more than 100% in 2013. Its loss for the year grew to ₹ 172.8 crore from ₹ 134.2 crore from the previous year. ​

India’s e-commerce market is expected to reach $6 billion in 2015, a 70% increase over the 2014 revenue of $3.5 billion, according to a Gartner Inc. report. E-commerce currently represents less than 4% of the total retail market, according to the report.

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