kolkatamumbai leading lifestyle brands in the country are planning to launch distinct product lines for online shopping sites hoping that the move will prevent deep discount ecommerce sales from cannibalising their physical stores future group itcowned wills lifestyle and john players puma turtle and max retail are among the companies that will launch channelspecific products over the next three months as a brand it will be foolish not to acknowledge ecommerce and hence we plan to have a product differentiation strategy with this years autumnwinter collection which will reduce channel conflict said abhishek ganguly managing director at puma india which plans to keep nearly 60 of its merchandise exclusive for both online and physical stores the trend among retailers is a reversal from nearly a year ago when most brands tried to fight off ecommerce players that thrive on a deep discounting strategy the retailers now plan to create different merchandise perhaps priced lower which will help create newer sets of consumers since online shoppers are looking for value and the regular line is getting discounted we will create a separate line to prevent conflict said amit ladsarai director at fastfashion brand turtle which will sell products online with 10 lower pricetags these products will be of different fabric and design than what is available at its physical stores a lot of these exclusive online products could be made keeping in mind a younger consumer base younger shoppers are dominant in ecommerce and they prefer more vibrant colours so we will make sure more colour choice is available online than may be in our stores said atul chand divisional chief executive for lifestyle retailing at itc ltd we always customise our products for each channel according to a recent ubs report the online apparel market can grow to 217 billion in the next five years this effectively means that relevant consumers will buy 40 of their apparel and footwear online by 2020 in india creating a separate line for ecommerce means studying the buying behaviour of such shoppers which will only further expand the market said arun sirdeshmukh cofounder and ceo at fashion etailer fashionara however some players feel the channel differentiation strategy is a shortterm approach while it can remove channel conflict we need to understand that consumers across channels are the same and they want their brand to have the same quality and positioning from wherever they are buying from said shivanandan pare head of commerce at madura fashion and lifestyle besides some brands are also unsure on what will drive online sales growthdiscounting or convenience to buy from whole host of options online retailers still have a yoyo strategy and we would like to wait for sometime before the segment stabilises itself said j suresh managing director of arvind lifestyle brands which sells more than 28 owned or licensed fashion brands including calvin klein nautica and us polo association max retail executive director vasanth kumar said the retailer too is evaluating strategy for separate merchandise line once