Amigo Sports’ plans FIFA stores

Amigo Sports, one of the leaders in franchising sports and casual fashion brands, has recently

attracted world-wide recognition by becoming the Indian licensee for launching FIFA official stores in India. Amigo Sports has entered into an exclusive licensing agreement with Global Brands Group, the global master licensee of the FIFA brand name for the same. The FIFA stores will open across more than 10 countries globally with India being the most recent entrant which will have 35 large format FIFA official stores through the franchise route by 2014.

Through this agreement, Amigo Sports will have exclusive rights to manufacturing, multi-channel distribution and retail of official FIFA merchandise across India, with the first two stores being set up within the Palladium Mall and Oberoi Mall in Mumbai. The company also plans to scale-up its shop-in-shops format from 65 to 150 stores and distribute its products to about 300 mom and pop stores over the next two-years.

"We are quite upbeat about the changing fashion trends in India. Sportswear and sports-related fashion casual wear is the emerging trend among the youth. We plan to expand our footprint in the Indian market and open 35 stores by end 2014. Our stores would have official FIFA Collections, FIFA’s football lifestyle apparel and accessories range designed with a unique signature fusing football, fashion and culture, and event merchandise and products from FIFA commercial affiliates," says Sanjeev Mehta, Chairman, Amigo Sports.

Amigo Sports plans to follow the franchise route for its expansion and will invest around Rs 60 crores by FY 12. The new stores, to be opened by the FOFO (franchisee-owned-and-operated) and COCO (company-owned-and-operated) formats, would be coming up across 30 cities such as Delhi, Bangalore, Hyderabad, Kolkata, Mumbai, Pune and Chennai. The company which currently operates around 49 stores across the country will soon take up this number to 100 after having tied up with large departmental stores like Shoppers Stop, Central and Westside to sell and promote official FIFA branded merchandise.