With over 13 editions, Myntra’s End of Reason Sale (EORS) has been bringing an unparalleled shopping experience to millions of shoppers over the years. The ongoing 14th edition of the fashion bonanza, between July 3-8, offers around 9 lakh styles by over 3,000 brands to the fashion-forward customers in the country. This year’s EORS is a beacon of hope and an opportunity for many brand partners, artisan community and delivery partners to restart their lives and livelihoods.
Behind every successful EORS are several women executives from the Myntraverse who are working round-the-clock to make sure that the latest edition of the shopping extravaganza is more memorable and enjoyable than the previous one.
‘The Pathfinders’ series showcases Myntra’s commitment to women empowerment with stories of women who are trailblazers in their own right.
In this edition of ‘The Pathfinders’ series, we look at how various women executives pitch in to make Myntra’s EORS a raging success.
A special time replete with collaboration
EORS is one of the biggest fashion events in the country not just for the customers and ecosystem partners, but also for the people at Myntra. Pulling off a large-scale event like this involves months of careful planning and execution. There is a special energy in the atmosphere around EORS – it’s a time of great hustle, taking bigger and bolder bets and for the teams to take ownership of their respective functions for taking the event in new and exciting directions.
“I love how all our teams come together to collaborate and share responsibilities,” says Priya Rajagopal, Deputy Director – Training Quality & Knowledge Management. Her role puts her in charge of key aspects of the customer experience, right from planning to ensuring enough personnel are trained and are in place in advance to handle the massive volumes of queries that come during EORS.
“To close the loop on a great shopping experience for customers, it’s important that our teams are able to problem-solve for them. We keep a close eye to ensure faster solutions for any challenges our customers might be facing. To this end, we work with various teams like marketing and category management so that customers get the right information and benefit timely,” she says.
For Anushree Purohit, Manager – Sale Events & Activations, liaising with customer-facing teams such as marketing and advertising, for ensuring that their strategy is on point, is essential to driving value to EORS. “The events team, being at the centre of the mammoth fashion event, collaborates with different functions within the company on a day-to-day basis to drive the progress, solve problems if needed and ensure that the stakeholders are aligned on the overall goals and objectives of any on-app events at any given time,” she says.
Keeping the shopper at the centre of it all
During EORS, everyone at Myntra aims at creating a delightful and larger shopping experience for customers with their unique skills. For Ambika Johri, Deputy Creative Director at Myntra, the goal is to reinforce the company’s strong brand identity through engaging visuals and user-centric designs.
“The visual and design elements are also attuned to the social context. Seven years ago, when EORS first started, we played a lot with the ‘end of reason’ messaging. Then, it evolved into reflecting the celebration the event is. The visual identity of December editions of the biannual event often reflects celebration and cheer,” she says. “This time around we have had to consider that people have gone through a lot. And, while the whole EORS continues to be an exciting time for our teams and customers, we also gave due thought to what people are missing right now and kept our design communications as empathetic towards users.”
It is this ability to reinvent itself that attracts millions of shoppers to every new edition of EORS and also makes it a unique learning experience for every single edition. “As a communications consultant, my role is to drive an impactful messaging around EORS by identifying stories that will aid the overall objective of the event while leveraging newer ways of communication, and also ensuring that the message reaches every intended person who consumes it through various mediums,” says Soujanya Kadiyala, Senior Manager – Corporate Communications, who operates in a dynamic media environment. Ever since the pandemic started, the media landscape has undergone so many changes and driving brand conversations has not been the way it used to be for her, earlier.
EORS: The employees’ perspectives
For the employees at Myntra, EORS is an extension of the company’s culture of celebration and the empowerment that comes with collaboration. There is a feeling of camaraderie as everyone puts in the hours towards creating something meaningful for the customers and the ecosystem, while celebrating the experience to the fullest.
“In pre-COVID editions of EORS, we would have a one-day gala, which involved everything, from a food street with multiple counters to, live band concerts,” says Arpitha, Manager – Real Estate and Workplace, who has been a part of all 14 EORS events till date. “We end up having late-night calls along with the leadership team just to see the engagement and which cities and categories are doing well. That’s the kind of energy and excitement we bring (to every EORS) and in which every employee of Myntra participates to the fullest!”
For Soujanya, every EORS is a transformative experience. “The event takes place twice in a year, making it the most exciting period of the year. I have evolved with every edition of EORS, both personally and professionally, because of the learnings that come with every edition. It’s a gratifying professional experience because it’s a clear opportunity to make an impact on the business objective of the company,” she says.
Ambika echoes Soujanya’s views, and shares how EORS is a testament to the impact her team is able to drive at the company. “Through EORS, I get to know how well and many people are engaging with the creatives that our team designs. It’s a reassurance that we are able to give such a nice or delightful shopping experience to the users.”
Keeping the EORS spirit strong in a post-pandemic world
Most of the teams at Myntra largely agree that executing EORS in a socially-distanced world comes with a whole new set of challenges and a steep learning curve. Right from organising vaccination drives for the front-line team members, to ensuring that those who needed to come to the office are provided with PPE kits, including maintaining of social distancing, and ensuring access to the infrastructure needed to carry out their jobs, Arpitha and her team faced the challenges head-on to support employees to enable various editions of EORS during the pandemic. Nonetheless, she also says that working on virtual platforms in no way diminished the excitement and super-charged atmosphere that comes with EORS.
For many like Priya, the achievement of pulling together an event of this scale in a virtual environment is in itself a milestone worth celebrating. “Customer contact training is a very complex experience which goes on for a couple of weeks, followed by one-on-one coaching. Training people virtually, and refining that model is something that we are very proud to achieve,” she says.
The 14th edition of the EORS is ongoing, and thanks to the efforts of the employees at Myntra, it is deemed to be bigger and better than ever, serving customers across the country.
