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Wednesday, 27 April 2011 |
ITC is experimenting with new formats to drive growth
of its apparel retail chain Wills Lifestyle, India’s most admired fashion brand. The brand is now focusing on specialty stores such as ‘menswear only´ and ‘boutique stores´ to offer more premium range, apart from expanding its retail reach. It plans to set up around 25 new stores across India in the next 15 months. At present, there are 75 stores operating in about 40 cities, 15 of these are under the franchise model.
According to ITC Lifestyle Retailing chief executive Atul Chand they have recently launched a store in Chennai to sell only menswear. The company plans to scale up the new format. Chand says in the current fiscal, ITC is targeting about 30 per cent growth in sales for its lifestyle retail business compared to 2010. Currently, 15 per cent of their total sales come from the designer range. They have tie-ups with 10 leading designers in the country who create exclusive range of clothes for their stores.
Wills Lifestyle has also set up high-end boutique stores to target luxury consumers at five-star hotels. These stores have different assortment of products and cater to higher-end consumers. Currently, the firm operates three such stores in the group’s hotels and two more are likely to come up soon. Additionally, Chand said that he is now focusing on having more franchise stores to penetrate into markets beyond the big cities and reach across hinterlands that have become economically buoyant. |
