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— Bijoy Ghosh

A view of Reliance Footprint’s first store in Chennai, which was inaugurated on Friday.

Our Bureau

Chennai, Aug. 29 Reliance Footprint Ltd, Reliance Retail’s footwear retail chain, is planning to close the current fiscal with at least 30 stores across the country.

According to Mr Gopalakrishnan Sankar, CEO of Reliance Footprint, all these will be large format (6,000 – 10,000 sq ft), company-owned and company-operated stores. “We are planning to open a minimum of 30-35 stores every year,” he said.

Mr Sankar, who was in town to launch the company’s seventh outlet and the first in Tamil Nadu, here today, said the next store will be in Kochi, and it will be followed by outlets in Mumbai, Jaipur and Amritsar within the next 20 days. The first footprint store was launched in Bangalore in November last year. Currently, apart from Chennai, Footprint stores are present in Bangalore, Hyderabad, Delhi, Noida, Mangalore and Ludhiana. Footprint plans to open at least five more stores in Chennai “in the next three to four years”.

Talking about the range of brands that are available in these stores, Mr Deepak Chhabra, Head Footwear, Reliance Retail Ltd, said the idea is to offer all premium brands from across the countries. The shop, segmented into casuals, formals, sports and accessories for men, women and children, has premium brands including Nike, Lotto, Reebok, Puma, Aokang, Buckaroo, Franco Leone, Gaitonde and Hush Puppies. At the entry level price points, Reliance has a range of in-house brands sourced from various vendors in India and China. “We offer private labels for all occasions - Mancini, Tosca, Viviana, Hi Attiude for the family, Monza for the sports’ enthusiast, Frisbee as homewear, Tom Sawyers for school children and Pitter Patter for infants,” said Mr Chhabra.

More Stories on : Retailing | Leather | Tamil Nadu

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