The Year-Round Wardrobe – Why Online Fashion is Defying the Season
Nikhil DalalWith the Indian festival season behind us, the seasonality trend is incomplete without a deep dive in one of the biggest categories, Fashion. With this, we draw the curtain on insights and market trends on the phenomenon of seasonality in consumer spending across various online sectors, including food ordering, ride-hailing, and retail. These insights were culled and mined from Benchmarks – Redseer’s proprietary consumer market intelligence platform.
Fashion is the largest component of online retail, accounting for every fourth rupee that the Indian consumer spends on online retail (last 3Y ending Aug’25). It comprises three subsectors: apparel, footwear, and accessories (in the order of prominence).
Online Fashion: Deeply Penetrated, Catering to Bharat
Online fashion is rapidly moving beyond metropolitan hubs. 59% of Online fashion GMV comes from T2+ cities (last 3Y ending Aug’25). In contrast, the corresponding number for overall online retail is 46%. While this proportion for online fashion is still lower, considering that 85% of India’s population resides in T2+ cities, this metric demonstrates that, as a sector, online fashion is not only fast percolating into the depths of Bharat, but it is doing so at a pace faster than most others.
Online Fashion vs. Online Retail: A Flatter Curve
Online Fashion exhibits lower-than-average seasonality compared to the total online retail market. While it still experiences a festive season peak, this peak is less pronounced, and the overall curve across the year is notably flatter than that of the rest of online retail. This suggests that consumer purchasing habits in fashion are becoming more routine and less event-driven.
De-averaging Seasonality in Fashion: Through Different Lenses
We delved deeper into seasonality for online fashion through three lenses: fashion subsector (apparel, footwear & accessories), town class (Metro, Tier 1, Tier 2+ towns), and time (pre-pandemic, pandemic, post-pandemic). The results reveal intriguing dynamics:
- Impact of Time: The pandemic caused an obvious disruption, leading to huge swings in seasonality over time. However, post-pandemic seasonality for fashion is now lower than the overall fashion average, indicating that the sector is fast becoming more immune to seasonal fluctuations.
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- Town Class Parity: There is virtually no difference in seasonality across town classes. This indicates that when it comes to online fashion buying behaviour, Tier 2+ towns and metros exhibit identical seasonal characteristics, reinforcing the belief that the sector is fast achieving substantial penetration across India.
- Subsector Nuance: We observe only marginal differences across fashion subsectors, with accessories – the smallest subsector – exhibiting marginally higher seasonality than apparel.
Implications: Strategic Plays for a Year-Round Market
The findings about reduced seasonality and deep penetration into Bharat offer clear directives for players in the ecosystem.
For Brands
The flatter demand curve necessitates two major shifts for brands:
- Shift from Campaign-centric to Continuous Inventory: Brands must move away from heavy, short-burst festive campaigns. The focus should shift to continuous, trend-driven drops and maintaining robust, year-round inventory to capitalise on the consistent, non-peak demand that now dominates the market.
- Prioritise Cross-Town Class Marketing: Given the identical seasonal behaviour across metros and T2+ cities, brands can streamline their marketing and product distribution strategies. Unified creative campaigns and similar product mixes can efficiently cater to this synchronised nationwide market, eliminating the need for highly localised seasonal adjustments.
For Platforms
Platforms must adapt their operational and promotional strategies to suit a stable, high-volume market:
- Optimise Logistics for Consistent Volume: Platforms should invest in optimising their supply chain and logistics network to handle a higher base level of consistent volume year-round, rather than scrambling to manage massive, temporary festive spikes. This proactive approach ensures better customer experience and overall cost efficiency.
- Leverage Non-Apparel Categories: Since accessories showed marginally higher seasonality, platforms have an opportunity to drive engagement and sales in non-apparel categories during mid-season lulls through targeted promotions and curated collections. This tactic can help smooth out the overall revenue curve further.
Conclusion
The market has matured beyond its early reliance on major festive spikes, successfully transitioning into a consistent, year-round consumption pattern. This stability, coupled with deep penetration into Tier 2+ cities, suggests that online fashion is now a truly foundational part of the Indian consumer’s spending habit, demanding a strategic shift towards continuous engagement and nationwide parity in planning and execution. Managing festive peaks without disruption.
The insights have been derived from Benchmarks by Redseer, the most trusted insights platform on the Indian internet landscape. Its proprietary consumer internet data allows us to make granular and long-term comparisons that reveal underlying trends and shifts in consumer behaviour.