The Fédération Internationale de Football Association (FIFA) which is only around 150 days old in the Indian market has already opened 75 retail doors in the country. It has just kicked off the new season with its latest range of fashion collection
which introduces several themes inspired by it’s over 100-year-old heritage in all stores nationwide. This collection is inspired by the winning teams of the World Cups since 1930. It celebrates each of the champion teams highlighting important elements of the particular game played that year. Styled in both short and long sleeve T-shirts, with prominent graphics and gold embroidery on each garment, they come in a variety of colors.
The essential elements of this line is that the appliqué, graphics with interesting interpretations of select pieces of history of foot ball, right from the birth of FIFA. The Heritage style for men from the latest range is a must have as it is a prized possession. The graphic T-shirts feature posters of the official FIFA world cup. Although predominant in the men’s collection, FIFA also caters to children in the 8-14 age-group and women. It will soon be launching accessories such as headgear, footballs, fashion bags, footwear, eyewear, watches and perfumes. Besides product expansion, FIFA is also looking at an aggressive retail expansion, having already tied up with some leading large format retailers such as Shoppers Stop, Lifestyle, Westside and other premium outlets of Future Group along with two exclusive stores so far.
“By 2014, we would have about 35 FIFA exclusive stores, 150 premium shop-in-shops and about 300 doors from the conventional distributor channel. We also intend to have substantial revenue through on line sales. During the first five years, we intend to invest around Rs 1,000 million in this business. We also intend to spend over Rs 400 million over the period towards marketing and promotion. The 35 exclusive stores will include a few flagship stores, which will be in five metros across the country,” says Sanjiv Mehta, Chairman, Amigo Sports who retail the FIFA brand.
“As a part of our citywise expansion, each metro will have about 3-5 exclusive stores by the end of 2014. Other than this we will increase our footprint to about 35 more towns through LFS and distributor-run retail doors,” he adds. As part of its promotional and marketing activities, FIFA is hoping to achieve a significant portion of revenues from e-retailing, by developing a special e-commerce channel. It also has an integrated marketing and communication strategy which is based on the ‘Off the Football field’ lifestyle mood shot in the Football Stadia ambience and developed for global usage by their principal company which will be adapted to India market accordingly.
