The Hindu Business Line : Naidu Hall plans new format store in Chennai

NAIDU Hall, one of the oldest women's wear retail brands in the city, plans to set up a large format department store in T. Nagar, Chennai's silk and jewellery shopping district.

Mr R. Aravind of Naidu Hall said that the 50,000 sq ft store would be spread over five to six grounds and would be more contemporary in style than the present formats.

Naidu Hall has been a familiar shopping destination in the city since 1939, selling a variety of women's wear. The store's forte has been readymade sari blouses, lingerie and other readymade garments. The production unit has a capacity of about 4,000 pieces (of blouses) per week.

Currently, there are five stores in Chennai located in prime shopping districts such as Purasawakkam, T. Nagar, Royapettah, Adyar and Nungambakkam. Mr Aravind said that two more stores of about 15,000 sq ft each in Chromepet and Velachery would open by April 2006.

The store on Khader Nawaz Khan Road in Nungambakkam will now become a jewellery store. He said that they would tie-up with a Mumbai-based manufacturer of artificial jewellery, SIA, for this project. Mr Aravind said that jewellery for the Bollywood blockbuster `Devdas' and more recently `Mangal Pande' was done by SIA.

This Deepavali, the store plans to introduce a range of embroidered Kancheepuram saris and blouses. The saris would be priced between Rs 20,000 and Rs 30,000. The embroidery alone on the blouse costs about Rs 5,000, he said.

Naidu Hall also offers some other variants of the Kancheepuram sari. The plain vanilla Kancheepuram, which is priced about Rs 3,000, is screen-printed, has a coloured border attached along with tissue motifs and embroidery. After this value addition, the sari costs about Rs 3,000 more. Naidu Hall is a fairly new entrant into sari retailing. Mr Aravind said that the sari retail market in Chennai has strong brands in it and Naidu Hall products had to have a different value proposition.

That is the only way to break into a traditional market, he said.

Naidu Hall has about 12 in-store brands like T2 for western wear and Malgudi for cotton saris. Besides regular advertising in print and billboard, Naidu Hall is backed by brand building exercise. The annual Duchess Club (an exclusive women's club) Utsav has now been renamed the Naidu Hall Utsav, he said.

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