Naapa Dori looks at expanding retail

Homegrown leather product brand Naapa Dori has opened its first store in Delhi’s upmarket Select CityWalk and has started looking for space in Mumbai’s malls. A relatively small manufacturer and retailer of handmade leather products is now a sought after brand for the malls. Select CityWalk chose Naapa Dori because of its well-designed product and its founder’s clarity of vision, says Yogeshwar Sharma, executive director of Select CityWalk.

The brand was founded by Gautam Sinha and has four stores in New Delhi. It has its products in other countries such as The Conran Shop in Paris and London, Anthropologie in the US and Benares in Singapore. More than 70 percent of its customers are expats. Its bags range from Rs 6,000 to Rs 16,000, giving a tough competition to Hidesign and Da Milano.

As Sinha points out they are choosy about venturing into e-commerce as online marketplace may dilute the brand. The start-up has had its own e-commerce from the beginning and gets about 14 percent from online sales. Naapa Dori is serious about expansion plans. Besides spreading out to Mumbai and Gurgaon, it wants to expand its product range. Starting with shoes, they will eventually look at luggage and related accessories. Later even apparels are in the pipeline. Sinha is a graduate from National Institute of Fashion Technology (NIFT) and works out of office-cum-studio in Sultanpur.