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Debdatta Das

New Delhi, Sept. 14

Nahar Industrial Enterprises Ltd (NIEL) said it has aggressive expansion plans for its ready-to-wear garments’ retail business under its subsidiary Nahar Retail Ltd, having reached a critical mass through its flagship brand, Cotton County.

“The ready-to-wear retail business is an extremely important part of our business, for which we have already invested Rs 100 crore, on our flagship mass segment menswear brand Cotton County. Now we plan to expand, not only in terms of number of outlets, but also in terms of capacity expansions and brand introductions,” said Mr Kamal Oswal, Vice-Chairman, NIEL.

The company, besides adding another 675 stores by 2009, to its already existent 325 Cotton County outlets, also plans to venture into the southern States. “Till now we were restricted to the northern, western and eastern part of India. Now we are planning to enter the southern markets as well and open as many as 200 new stores there,” said Mr Oswal. Investments will amount to almost Rs 40 lakh per outlet.

In fact, NIEL will follow its strategy of opening stores first in the Tier II and III cities, before it forays in to the larger cities. “We are primarily a mass-oriented brand, so it is more important that we make ourselves available in the smaller cities before we make our presence felt in the larger ones,” explained Mr Oswal.

The company has already marked its foray into Karnataka, where it has opened outlets in Belgaum and plans to open more in places such as Gulbarga, and Hubli.

Besides, keeping with its strategy to enter the larger cities, it has already signed up for eight outlets in Mumbai, where it will also be introducing its premium garment brand, French Republic, as a shop-in-shop at the Cotton County outlets.

“For foraying into the bigger metro cities, we realised the demand and importance of having a premium range as well. Therefore, we will introduce our premium brand French Republic by January 2008 at all the outlets we open in the larger cities and some of the Tier II cities,” said Mr Oswal.

The company also intends to introduce a women’s wear and kids wear range under the Cotton County label by January 2008, for which test marketing in some small cities has already begun. Also in terms of capacity expansion, NIEL will invest Rs 40 crore this fiscal to add to its production capacity to keep up with the increase in demand. It has also earmarked denims as a potential growth area.

“The current denim market in the country is almost 40 lakh pairs a month, of which we want to capture at least 5 per cent in the next three years,” said Mr Oswal. Nahar Retail had clocked revenues of over Rs 100 crore last fiscal and targets doubling turnover in 2007-08.

More Stories on : Retailing | Readymade Garments

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