Mustang: Styling and warming up Indian feet

Making a style statement with your pair of socks is what Mustang is helping people do. Their focus has been socks of all kinds from men to women and children Mustang is catering to the needs across the range. “We have a very

large men’s market but we are really known for our women’s and children’s socks. The innerwear range Fundees, was developed to complement the socks range because we also took licenses for cartoon characters. We started with Disney initially but now we have Benton, Spiderman, Ninja etc,” says Lubeina Shahpurwala, Director, Mustang Enterprises. And since socks don’t justify the royalty they pay, they have taken an entire line of innerwear that complements the socks range. The innerwear line is also distributed to large format stores like Shoppers and Lifestyle.

Being counted among the top socks brands in India, Mustang’s retail spread is fairly wide and covers most of India. “We cover primarily the metros and through the metros, we have large distributors. So we go to all the smaller towns. For example, from Jaipur we distribute to the smaller towns. In the south, it’s from Coimbatore to Pondicherry. In the north, we are in Delhi and it goes all the way to Chandigarh, Ludhiana, Amritsar and Shimla. We go to Pune, Goa and also have a strong presence in the Northeast all the way to Nagaland.

Going by the success of their brand, Mustang now plans to have EBOs.”We will open these in Mumbai, Delhi and Bangalore. An outlet will be 250 to 300 sq. ft. The exclusive outlets will be a mix of franchisee and company-owned. We supply to around 1,600 to 2,000 hosiery shops and MBOs all over India and have a large export market as well. We are in Lifestyle, Westside, Globus. And we do a lot of socks for various brands. If brands want to outsource, we do that as well,” avers Shahpurwala.

What makes the brand click is their vast product portfolio. For example, in men’s socks they have 10 to 12 styles. In children’s they have a particular style, which is called CL within which they have 50 designs. And within those 50 designs, they have five combinations each. For women, they have 10 or 15 styles divided into 10 or 15 designs each. In Fundees they have a range of vests, briefs, panties, camisoles, hankies and tights as well. They do tights but that’s in the Mustang range. In addition they also have a range of health socks. It covers diabetic socks which is made of special soft lycra, extra special cushioning, with a mesh on the top where feet can breathe better.

Their Palghar-based production unit makes about 500,000 pairs of socks a month. “For the last two years we have fortified the manufacturing facility. The next two years will be in building the brand, targeting industry, targeting trade. After April 2011, we will also look at an IPO,” informs Shahpurwala.