Arvind Retail plans to increase its footprint

Arvind Retail is looking at opening 200 stores in 2016-17 across its lifestyle, value and foreign brands. It hopes its foreign brands would boost apparel sales in the next financial year and the growth would be 25 per cent.

Arvind Retail is adding more outlets to sell Gap, Sephora and Aeropostale merchandise in big cities. Apart from Tommy Hilfiger, Nautica and Ed Hardy, the company added Gap, Aeropostale, Sephora and The Children’s Place (TCP). In 2016-17, Gap and Sephora each will add six more stores while Aeropostale and TCP will get another 10 store each. J Suresh, Managing Director and Chief Executive of Arvind Retail and Arvind Lifestyle Brands strongly contests for the new stores and believes that a large part of growth will come from these new format stores.

The company is looking at closing the FY 2015-16 with an 18 per cent increase in sales. For nine months ended December 31 revenue grew 11.3 per cent to Rs 1,966 crore. For the quarter ended December 31, revenue moved up 11.9 per cent to Rs 737 crore.

At a time when domestic brick-and-mortar retailers are facing tough competition from online stores, Arvind Retail has decided to go in for expansion. However, the company is confident that the prevailing tepid consumer sentiment will change and demand will start rising in 4-6 months. Suresh is confident that the growth will come from opening new stores. However, it is clear about launching any more foreign labels in India in the coming year as it wants to concentrate on consolidating its portfolio across markets.

As per a December 2015 report by Edelweiss Broking Ltd, the Indian branded apparel industry is estimated to be USD10 billion in size and growing at 10-12 per cent per annum.