In our series on Company Feature, today we are showcasing AllSchoolStuff, India’s first one stop shop for all school and learning needs. AllSchoolStuff.com provides an exciting online destination for students, parents, teachers & schools to choose from a wide variety of branded, high quality products to meet all their school, educational & learning needs.
Devendra Singh of RetailBiz caught up with Manoj Chandra who is the Founder and CEO of the company.
RetailBiz: Please tell us about your business in more detail.
Manoj: AllSchoolStuff provides a one stop shop solution to Students & their Parents looking for school text books, stationery, note books, art & craft materials, school bags, water bottles, , school shoes, sports items, music instruments, science kits, exam guides, and other such educational products to meet all their School needs.
Parents can also find a wide variety of Pre-School products on the site to meet their needs and to provide their very young children an early learning experience, before they go to school. A wide variety of pre-school products are available at AllSchoolStuff.com such as educational toys, activity sets, flash cards & picture books, puzzles, shapes, abacus, etc.
The products are easily categorized as per age, class, subject or activity, making it easy for parents to quickly browse through the large catalogue on offer of over 20,000 items and conveniently purchase all their requirements and have all the items delivered very quickly in one single package through the Company’s FREE Home Delivery service.
RetailBiz: And some more details about you?
Manoj: I am a marketing professional with over 2 decades of experience in building strong brands and exposure to consumer products, services, retailing & logistics industries. In my last employment I was the key member of the Bata India management team, which led the turnaround of Bata to make it one of the most admired retail brands in India today.
RetailBiz: What were some of the challenges you faced when you started?
Manoj: The biggest challenge is availability of quality human resources, as is in any retail business, as also the brand awareness of the consumers. Since, AllSchoolStuff.com is one of its own kind, our biggest challenge was to reach the right target audience by offering right set of products meeting their child’s learning, growth & development needs.
An online store is open 24 X 7 X 365 day. It doesn’t shut down like a physical store. The entire experience is virtual for the customer. The challenge is therefore to give the customer the same experience that he enjoys in a physical store with the additional ecommerce advantages of being virtual, always available, very large range of merchandise, ease of display and selection, great pricing, and of course great customer service.
RetailBiz: Would you like to share some insights on your customer support?
Manoj: We have a robust Customer Service department to take care of all our customer’s needs. Customers are kept abreast via email/sms of all information related to their orders right from the time that they register with us till the time their order is delivered. In case of any concern, our Customer Service team is available to help them with any problem through email or our helpline.
We offer the best delivery services and use best in class logistics partners to deliver the goods. We ship anywhere in India and even to international locations. Our standard shipping time is within 5-7 days across India. We do not ship or deliver on Sundays, and National Holidays. Currently, we offer Free Shipping on all orders above Rs. 750/- across the country.
Our top most concern is our customer’s complete satisfaction. We therefore offer a no questions asked Free Return Policy wherein a customer can return or exchange any products bought within 7 days of purchase.
RetailBiz: How do you see your business grow in next 2 years?
Manoj: AllSchoolStuff will be India’s largest retail brand in the School and Educational Supplies space.
We have chosen the school and educational supplies vertical for our business model. However, this vertical is actually a huge horizontal with scope to expand into more and more categories. We already have over 200 product groups on the store and expect this figure to double over the next few months
Retailbiz: Any anecdote about your business that our readers may find interesting?
Manoj: One of our customers ordered some items from the store, later we got to know that it was for her child’s birthday. The AllSchoolStuff team worked hard to ensure that her order reached in time for the birthday. The customer was delighted and has been our regular customer since.
