Jacket, the outerwear that covers the top part of the body and arms, is usually more of a fashion wear in India than a garment for warmth. Most parts of the country, excluding the Himalayan states, do not have very low temperatures for more than two or three weeks every year. So people there don’t need too many of winter clothes. Most people have sweaters, some go in for coats, but not many opt for a jacket for warmth. Those who do use jackets do so because it looks trendy and great and stylish. In the states where extreme cold temperatures persist for long, people do choose jackets but more among them have to go in for better protections. There, the jacket becomes a garment for warmth and fashion.

Jackets for everybody

Online shopping of winter jackets for men in India makes available a great variety of jackets available for every member of the family. The materials used include cotton, denim, leather, nylon, corduroy, jute, synthetic material, fleece, wool, silk, fur and velvet or any number of combinations of any of these. The jackets, with full or half sleeves or sleeveless, are manufactured in a sufficient number sizes so that everybody can have a jacket that fits the person well. The designs are numerous. The neck and collars can be of many different types. And the number of colours used is enormous. The jackets meant for girls and children are particularly colourful.

Complicated pricing policy

The pricing is naturally a bit complicated. There are hundreds of brands producing jackets competing for getting a large share of the jacket sales across the country. They all publish their brochures with impressive models showcasing their jackets. A price is mentioned in these brochures or in the online listing of the jackets. But it scratched and a price roughly 10 percent to 25 percent less is mentioned against it as the operating price. How and why this price is reduced is not clear. And why only by that particular amount is also not known. Then the online shops offer a discount from 10 percent to 50 percent. Here too, why only that much and why it is applicable to only some products is not clear. Add to that the special festival offers, which often call on the people to “Buy one, get one free.”

Many discounts

Such discounts lead the buyer to suspect that the pricing policy has a lot to hide. The pricing policy is never transparent. It is clear to every average consumer that the price of a jacket stitched by a village tailor is roughly a third of the branded variety. As soon as a brand name appears on the scene, the price jumps up. How much of that rise is reasonable is not clear going by the discount policies of the online shops. The price range confirms all such doubts about the pricing of the jackets online. They are available from about Rs300 to over Rs13000. But this has been the case with the local shops in the pre-online shops era as well. The pricing policy of readymade clothes has always been more than a bit puzzling.