Juelle, keeps its focus on spreading its retail footprint

What started in 2009-10 as a casual women’s wear brand Juelle, has now expanded to a wide range of clothing for women. Turbo Retail, the parent company of Juelle, now plans to reach at least 1,800 multi brand outlets. The expansion plans have been extended to exports as well, with the first two exclusive brand outlets coming up in Dubai. Another has been opened in Sharjah. In addition, the company is exporting to other countries in the Middle East too such as Oman and Saudi Arabia. Given that there are more than 1,800 MBOs in India, Juelle has ambitious plans to cover all of them. However, at present they are not focused on EBOs in India.

Tapping the right segment

Women’s wear is an ever growing and profitable segment. And over the years, the segment has been growing fast with new trends and designs coming in every season. When Juelle started out, it focused only on casual and pure western wear. Fusion was not their cup of tea. But somewhere along the brand realised it was difficult to stay away from fusion. There were too many trends happening every year and they had to keep up with the times. So, Indo-western wear became their forte. They now sell sweat shirts, one-piece, two-pieces as well as long gowns in the winter segment. Even long sleeve dresses have been incorporated in their collection. A wide range of colours are also on offer. The dresses are moderately priced which has made them do extremely well in Tier II and III cities. Quality has also not been compromised. As a result growth has been a satisfactory 35 per cent per annum.

Bitten by the e-retailing bug

Since 98 per cent of Juelle’s sales come from the MBOs format, the company had not jumped onto the e-commerce bandwagon. Only recently they entered the e-retailing segment but it has been done on a small scale. At present it’s more a brand building exercise. As Guneet Singh, Director, Turbo Retail says, “It is not a sale venture or sale opportunity or a volume building platform for us. Because the actual conversion we see in e-retailing for Juelle is very less. Also, we have checked a variety of brands, and the collections they have in the MBOs are very different from what they offer online. This is because no one wants to give away 98 per cent share of the market for 2 per cent brand building. This is because till now in India the e-commerce platform is in discount format.”

Ludhiana-based Turbo Retail was into export of menswear for a long time before venturing into women’s wear and launching Juelle. Run by Guneet and Japneet Singh, Juelle has managed to offer fashionable western wear at affordable prices, particularly in smaller towns and cities.

Explains Japneet Singh, Creative Director, Turbo Retail, “We’re doing well because we are steady and are doing different concepts in the smaller women’s western wear segment. I personally don’t go with the general belief that the market is volatile and it is going down. We are always upbeat and positive. We have been rewarded also every year with the basic size of growth percentage and a very good image in the market.”