Ever heard of a fashion emergency? Think of a fashionista who has just clicked the ‘buy’ button to pick up an eye-popping resort wear from a famous brand. But there is a nagging doubt in her mind. Will the precious cargo arrive before her long-awaited overseas vacation starts?

According to Inc42, the online fashion and apparel industry is estimated to grow from $20 Bn in 2022 to $112 Bn by 2030. The fashion landscape at home has undergone a paradigm shift, rapidly becoming a global force embellished with international tie-ups and corporate funding.

Yet, few online/omnichannel fashion retailers or direct-to-consumer (D2C) brands take the FedEx route for prompt deliveries. Many of these garments arrive in a sorry shape, full of creases and wrinkles.

The narrative is changing, though, and fashion wear is getting the white-glove delivery service it has long deserved. On any given day, trucks and vans line up for loading and unloading before the strategic fulfilment centres, run by the 3PL (third-party logistics) startup Emiza in 14 cities including Delhi, Mumbai, Kolkata, Chennai, Hyderabad, Bengaluru, Guwahati, Indore, Patna, Chandigarh, Lucknow, Gurugram among others.

Its facilities are always buzzing with activity as 100K packages are delivered every day. During seasonal or clearance sales, the volume can quickly swell five times, Emiza’s founder and CEO, Ajay Rao, tells Inc42.

Storing fashion efficiently, including sorting, packing and shipping, is not the forte of many logistics players. However, Emiza (derived from Sanskrit, which means empower) has been doing it since 2015, when Rao and Jitendra Kumar set up operations, with Mumbai as its headquarters. It runs as many as 23 fulfilment centres and all its facilities house towering, multi-tier shelves for storing hundreds of thousands of garments categorised by type, size and colour. Once an order request comes in, the item is packed and kept ready for a delivery partner to pick up.

This may sound deceptively simple for the uninitiated, but every ecommerce brand acknowledges the intricacies of making deliveries happen within the stipulated time frame. It is a complex manoeuvre mastered well by 3PL players like Emiza, which use smart warehousing solutions for operational efficiency (more on that later).

Rao says the 3PL platform has partnered with........

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