Crosscreek pushing up e-retail to increase brand presence

After experiencing excellent Diwali sales, Crosscreek is now looking forward to a positive season ahead. The brand from Rishabh Apparels is eyeing Rs 12-13 crores business in next three years. The company is also looking at spreading

its retail presence through e-commerce portals and increasing its presence in LFS stores.

On the product front, Mitesh Jagawat, Director, Rishabh Apparels says, “Earlier, we only had shirts, but now we are also doing casual T-shirts for men. We have come out with winter wear like sweat shirts with hood and hi-neck, concentrating on medium to dark earthy colours. We are not doing any changes as far as the prices are concerned but planning to add track pants and shorts in the near future.”

Rishabh Apparels launched Crosscreek in 2004. Initially they started by selling only in Kerala for the first two years. Gradually, they covered Tamil Nadu, Andhra Pradesh and Karnataka regions. We have a strong hold in the South Indian market. Today, we are available all over India through online portals and large format stores. We have also started our own online store crosscreek.in,” he adds.

As of now, the products are present in 150 MBOs in South India and 60 LFS stores across India apart from 15 online stores. “We get 15 per cent sales from online stores, 50 per cent from MBOs and 35 per cent from LFS,” explains Jagawat.

Unbranded segment holds a larger share in the Indian shirt market and being a branded shirt player, Jagawat feels that organised players have to stick to the quality and fashion. “They should come up with innovations in fabrics, washes, styles and colours. Place the products in proper price bracket,” he opines.

Jagawat says, the ratio of conversion from unbranded to branded clothing is 5 per cent, which is quite low but once the branded player price their products reasonably, it should increase its pace.