International sports lifestyle brands are finding the Indian market highly lucrative. With niche sports such as skateboarding, surfing, snow-boarding, snorkelling and golf gaining traction with the middle class, global brands are forging long-term licensing agreement and pumping investments into the domestic turf.

Brands such as Quiksilver Holdings, Lotto and Callaway Golf have already made inroads and are now going ahead full steam, investing in mono-brand outlets and enhancing brand presence through shop-in shops.

Clubs

Analysts observe that sports such as skateboarding have led patrons to set up clubs even in places such as Pune and Surat, where youngsters are taking up the sport with vigour. Snorkelling, meanwhile, has been gaining in popularity in tourist destinations such as Goa, Andaman and even Daman, among middle-class tourists. Certain games also owe their birth in India to X Games, an American extreme sports tournament on TV.

Last month, Reliance Retail-owned Reliance Brands entered into a 25-year licensing agreement with sports lifestyle brand Quiksilver Holdings to introduce its flagship brands Quiksilver and Roxy in India, Nepal, Bangladesh and Sri Lanka.

Quiksilver's first mono-brand store will be launched later this year and will sell apparel, accessories and footwear. Reliance Brands will set up six company-owned and company-operated stores by 2011 to build the brand in the country.

“As markets mature, these kinds of sub-segmentation will create a category of their own. Currently, there is no player which targets young adults,” said Mr Darshan Mehta, President and CEO, Reliance Brands, adding that the apparel and accessories range would be priced between Rs 2,500 and Rs 5,000.

Reliance Brands will import all the products for the first two years. “We will gauge the market response before we start manufacturing here. We have to achieve a certain scale before we start manufacturing.”

Italian sports brand Lotto Sports Italia marked its second innings in the country by renewing its licensing and marketing arrangement with Sports Lifestyle, and said it would double its mono-brand store count from the present 50 outlets by the end of the year.

“We will be playing on the price factor and maintain prices notches below leading lifestyle sports brands to make our products more affordable,” Mr Lalit Kishore, Managing Director, Sports Lifestyle, said.

Booming middle-class

The company said the booming middle-class is spearheading its growth and Lotto expects India to be its top market in the Asia-Pacific region. At present, India comes third after China and Japan in terms of turnover.

“Besides doubling our mono-brand outlets, we will also be opening 150 shop-in-shops in the major departmental stores such as Shoppers Stop and Reliance Footprint,” he said. The mono-brand outlets will be set up at an estimated investment of Rs 20 lakh per store and will entail a retail area of 500-700 sq ft. According to an ICRIER study, the branded sportswear market in India is estimated to be near $1 billion, 75 per cent of which is controlled by Reebok and adidas. The sports lifestyle business has been growing at an estimated 30-40 per cent per annum.

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