Office furniture major Featherlite has diversified into home furniture. The company plans to set up a series of ‘Featherlite Living' stores, initially in the South.

“We have located our first such store in Hyderabad and plan to have eight more by the year-end and 15 by 2012. These stores will come up through a franchise network but will be company-owned. Typically, each store will require investment of about Rs 2 crore,” according to Mr Manohar Gopal, Director of Featherlite.The Bangalore-based company has annual sales of over Rs 200 crore from the furnishing business.

“The market for home furnishing products is growing, particularly in the middle income group. There are very few organised players addressing this business opportunity. Having created a brand for office furnishing products with 45 years business, we see this as a logical extension. In the first year, we are looking at revenues of about Rs 25 crore from this division,” he said.

Speaking to Business Line after the launch of the home furnishing range last week, Mr Gopal said the products are priced between Rs 35,000 and Rs 1.6 lakh . About 25 per cent of the products are made by the company with the rest sourced from third party companies, including from other countries.

“The market for office furniture has begun to look up in the past six months after nearly one and a half years of slowdown. With a majority of the demand for office furniture coming from IT and other services sectors, the market was subdued. We expect home furnishing to add to business volumes,” Mr K. Srihari, CEO, said.

The company had earlier diversified into real estate business through its arm Featherlite Developers, as a services provider for hospitality through Studio F and an incubation centre Evoma.

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