Live-in: Tastes success through MBOs

Live-in, the popular jeans wear brand has chalked out plans to widen its retail network especially in the east. Launched in 1998, Live-in is a part of the Federal Brands and targets the fashion-conscious, teenagers offering them a label that sports

international styles at an affordable price. “We have denims and casual trousers and we also do T-shirts but only a limited range for our EBOs. We don’t want to increase our product range as whatever we do, we will do only in bottom wear,” says Tirtha Bhowmick, National Sales Manager, Federal Brands.

For the last one and a half years their focus has been MBOs. Currently, they supply to 3,000 MBOs all over India. “As of now, no company, or brand has this kind of MBO network. By March 2011, we will increase our MBOs by 10 per cent.” As for EBOs, explains Bhowmick “there is a huge difference between a ‘show room’ and a ‘sales room’. We had to decide whether to have show rooms or sales rooms, when we closed the retail division two years back. We had 26 EBOs, out of them 15 are still running but in a different model and not under the normal EBO terms and conditions. These EBOs buy Live-in products from our distributors.”

Bhowmick feels they wouldn’t be present in large format stores either because of the shelf-to-shelf competition there. “No large format store is dedicated or committed to any brand and if we were to place our brand in a large format store, we will have to go for discounting. But we don’t discount since we don’t have a margin to discount. Likewise, we rarely have leftovers stocks. The only successful large format stores are Pantaloons and Shoppers Stop. They have maintained their niche,” Bhowmick avers.

The brand has plans to expand in MBOs all over India, more so in the east. That’s because the east is one of their weaker markets. Their sales team has been given a target to open another 25 stores in Jharkhand while in Kerala it has to be 10 stores, because Kerala is a high selling market for them. “We are planning to capture more and more markets, a bigger market share and bigger share in the dealers’ shelf space. Last year, we closed at Rs 70 crores. This year we are targeting Rs 100 crores and the next year’s target it will be Rs 200 crores.”