Proline to foray into innerwear, women’s wear and kids wear

Proline, the premium menswear brand is firming up its plans to launch an innerwear range in autumn/winter ’10. “We are looking at introducing it around October. It will include boxers, vests, briefs and the like. At the moment, we are working on the price structure,” says Rajesh

Sampath, General Manager, Operations and Marketing, Proline India. Sampath says earlier every segment of the target group used to prefer traditional innerwear. However, trends have changed now and there is a huge
opportunity in this space. Meanwhile, the brand is also launching a women’s wear and children’s wear range. “We will launch these by Spring ’11,” he says.

Recently, Proline launched its spring/summer ’10 apparel collection. It’s aimed at the young men who love to live life on the edge. It comes in three ranges: the vintage collection called ‘Champion Look’; the sporty ‘Soccer Fever’ range; and the street wear range called ‘Desi Road Print’. Incidentally, the brand also has a tie up with Bombay Dyeing to sell Vivaldi, which is a complete formal menswear brand through prominent Proline stores. Bombay Dyeing holds 51 per cent stake in Proline India. This year, Proline India is expecting a turnover of Rs 50 crores. A year-on-year growth of 12-15 per cent compared to last year. Next year, they are projecting a 20 per cent growth.p>At the moment, Proline has 24 exclusive brand outlets (EBOs) across India. Of these, 17 to 18 are company-owned and the rest are a combination of management operated and franchisees. “We also have over 700 multi brand outlets and are available across all large formats like Lifestyle, Shoppers Stop, Globus, Central, Reliance Trends, Brand Factory. Now, we would be entering Mega Mart, which has come up with large format stores,” Sampath says.  This year, the brand is planning to open 10 to 12 EBOs. “If we get the infrastructure, we will look at managing the stores on our own,” he says. Besides the metros, they are looking at Tier 2 and Tier 3 cities like Coimbatore, Mangalore, Pune and Nagpur.
Proline is also into exports in a big way. Their merchandise is exported to the Middle East, Sri Lanka and Singapore. In all these markets, the brand is present either through a partner or a distributor or a large format store.