Comments
Popees Baby Care Products, the leading children’s clothing brand in Kerala, is shortly expanding its retail presence across South India.
This will be through own and franchisee model, and there are also plans to open the first overseas stores in London and Manchester soon, said Shaju Thomas, Managing Director. According to him, the excelling target in the Covid pandemic times has prompted the company to expand domestically and internationally .
Right now, Popees has 32 exclusive outlets in South India in addition to several multi-brand outlets stocking its products. Of these 32 outlets, he said the company had opened 25 since the outbreak of Covid, and the performance and prospects of these outlets were really promising, facilitating for a retail expansion, he said.
Children’s clothing
Popees is focussing on the children’s garments in the age group of 0-6 years. The market for children’s clothing in South India in the age group of 0 to 3 years is estimated at around ₹300 crore in the organized segment, and the company is having a share of 20 per cent. It aims to make it 30 per cent and get into the national market in a big way, he said.
With manufacturing units at Tiruvali in Malappuram, Bengaluru and Tirupur with a production capacity of five lakh garments per month, the company plans to take the number of exclusive outlets to 100 by the end of this year and to 500 in the next five years.
Financials
On the financial performance, Thomas said the annual sales turnover stood at ₹134 crore, which would expect to cross ₹200 crore this year. “We aim to achieve the ₹1,000 crore mark in the next five years”, he said, adding that exports contributed around 5-8 per cent of the current sales turnover.
e-Commerce space
“We are also striving for a paradigm shift in the business model by strengthening the presence in the e-commerce space. The new omni channel will be launched to give customers a different shopping experience. Popees has already got a growing presence in Amazon, Flipkart and Ajio”, he said.
He claimed that Popees is one of the very few clothing manufacturers in south India that market their own brand compared to those working for foreign labels. He said The company has also proposed increasing its product range with toys, diapers and accessories. For funding the expansion, plans are afoot to go for private placements and later IPO by the end of FY25.
The brand has also launched South India's first baby soap recently in addition to baby oil, wipes, bath gel and baby shampoo.
Comments
COMMENT NOW
Comments
Comments have to be in English, and in full sentences. They cannot be abusive or personal. Please abide by our community guidelines for posting your comments.
We have migrated to a new commenting platform. If you are already a registered user of TheHindu Businessline and logged in, you may continue to engage with our articles. If you do not have an account please register and login to post comments. Users can access their older comments by logging into their accounts on Vuukle.