With its huge product portfolio of casual wear and sportswear, Black Panther is all set to focus on the children’s category in the forthcoming season. The brand, which has developed an entire range of kids’ wear, has started off with boys’ wear
which includes sports jerseys, track pants, three-fourths, shorts, half sleeve T-shirts. The range starts at Rs 360 and goes up to Rs 800. On expanding the kids’ wear range, Sakshi Juneja, Manager-Business Development, Juneja Global, makers of the brand Black Panther, says, “The kids wear range is already present in the market. We have test marketed the products and now we are in a position to appoint distributors to expand the range.” Meanwhile the brand is also working towards bringing in an international brand for shoes. “We will be licensing this brand. We are in talks with some international brands and to launch by 2012-13,” informs Juneja.
Black Panther caters to the middle income group aged between 14 to 40 years. Their products include track pants, T-shirts, gym wear, capris, and tracksuits. “In the sportswear category, we play more with the fabric. We have knitted, wovens, performance and compression fabrics,” she says. The swimwear line which the brand launched two years ago for both men and women has received a good response. The brand does not believe in the season cycle. Instead it updates its collections every three months. It keeps adding new styles and discontinuing some old ones which are not so popular throughout the year. According to Juneja, Black Panther is a value for money brand and perfectly fits into Tier II and III cities.
Currently the brand has seven exclusive outlets, three in Mumbai, one in Kalyan and three in Indore. The Indore stores are franchisees and the rest are company-owned and managed. By the year end it is looking at adding three more exclusive outlets. “We are looking at places like Pune, Ujjain and probably Hyderabad. We won’t mind opening a company owned and managed store in Pune because of the short distance. For Hyderabad we would look at franchisees.” It is also present in 400 MBOs and LFS like Shoppers Stop, Globus, Hypercity, Reliance Trends and Reliance Supermarket, Spencer’s Retail, Maya by Gitanjali. And now that it’s expanding into kids wear, it will also increase its MBO reach this year.
