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Premium menswear brand Blackberrys — owned by Mohan Clothing Co Pvt Ltd — is rebranding itself.
The company has created three different brand identities that include the parent brand Blackberrys, “Urban” Blackberrys and Blackberrys “Casuale”.
While the mother brand, Blackberrys will cater to formal wear, Casuale as the name suggests will be casual wear brand of the company. Urban, on the other hand, will be a hipster brand with focus on denims and high-street fashion (clothes which are not occasion specific) for those aged between 18 and 30.
Apart from brand outlets being re-branded as ‘The House of Blackberrys’ – which will stock all the three entities, Urban will have a separate retail presence through multi-brand outlets, standalone stores and in large format retails. Similar plans are being worked out for Casuale too. According to Mallika Misra, Senior Manager – Urban, Product Merchandising, the standalone retail presence was planned after the brand (Urban) started getting good traction.
Moreover, there remained vacant space in the high-street fashion brand space in India apart from foreign majors such as Zara, Jack and Jones, Scotch and Soda, and to a certain extent, United Colors of Benetton.
“There was a space for a high-street brand. And with the traction that Urban was getting, we thought of extending it into a separate retail entity targeting the late millenials,” she told BusinessLine on the sidelines of its store launch here.
Standalone presence
Urban was launched in 2014 as a sub-brand with Blackberrys and was hived into a separate retail entity in June 2017.
As a standalone entity, Urban reported a turnover of ₹90 crore last fiscal (FY18), which was 10 per cent of the ₹900-crore that Blackberrys (MCCPL) reported.
For FY19, Urban expects a 65 per cent growth of last fiscal thereby, clocking revenues to the tune of ₹150 crore. Its contribution to the group turnover is expected to go up to 12 per cent.
In fact, Misra points out that from 12 exclusive stores, the plan is to add 50 more within this fiscal.
This will include 15 company-owned and 35 franchise-owned ones. Similar expansion plans are also there with respect to multi-brand and large format retail stores.
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