New products to boost Brisa’s customer base

Pragati Fashions well known for its brand Zola, Olay and Brisa is chalking out plans to expand its product portfolio. The company plans to increase its product range especially in Brisa, which is a girl’s ethnic, western and Indo-western range.

It caters to the age group two to 16 years. “Once our product range increases, our customer base will increase by 15 to 20 per cent. We will also introduce boys wear but under a totally different brand,” says Rajiv Gala, Director, Pragati Fashions.

At the moment Brisa is being retailed through more than 2,500 MBO.  Zola and Olay are brands aimed at girls above 16 years of age. For Zola they have about 18 exclusive retail outlets that are franchisee owned and 16 exclusive shops-in-shop counters. Pragati now plans to have another 100 shop-in-shop counters by the end of next year. Indeed, Brisa is being retailed through the Zola outlets and Pragati is not looking at standalone stores for the brand. “When the opportunity comes, we will open more Zola stores. As for large formats, we supply Brisa to Reliance and it also goes to a lot of department stores in the south. Every year we add MBOs by 15 to 20 per cent,” he informs.

  Pragati is also very active in the apparel export space. Gala says “We have a lot of customers based in the Gulf, Malaysia and Sri Lanka. So we are exporting under our brand name. We use the vendor route to reach out to the Gulf countries. We will reach out to more countries and are getting a lot of customers from the US and UK.”

Pragati Fashions started the Brisa brand in 1996. At that time it was called Param. In 2004 they renamed it Brisa. The product portfolio ranges from ethnic to Indo-western. In ethnic wear they offer cholis, churidars, suits, ghagra cholis and kurtis which range from Rs 399 and goes to Rs 2,000. In westerns, they offer T-shirts, leggings, skirts, denims, rompers, etc. In Indo-westerns they have kurtis that go up to Rs 1,000.  “As far as trends go, we are seeing a major demand in the western category for girls’ wear. Most of the branded players who offer western wear are very high priced. Only the upper middle and upper classes can afford it. We offer the very latest styles in western girls’ wear at an affordable price,” opines Gala.

Pragati Fashions is looking to increase turnover by 20 per cent next year and the year after that they are aiming for a 50 to 60 per cent growth.