Spencer’s Retail to launch Ladybird this month

Spencer's Retail is betting big on its specialty retail format. The RPG Group hypermarket chain will introduce UK kid’s wear brand Ladybird this month as a part of its plans to increase focus on apparels. That’s not all, Spencer’s, which already retails Ecko

Unlimited and Ecko Red under Mark Ecko brand, plans to launch the Cut & Sew brand under the same brand by next fiscal.

The retail chain already has three international brands in its portfolio. As CEO Anurag Rajpal explains, “We launched Beverly Hills last year and are scaling it up rapidly in terms of the number of stores opening. Ladybird is being launched soon with the first standalone store.” Ladybird is a brand owned by Woolworths of UK which got bust. It got sold to a leading online catalogue retailer, which is repositioning it and Spencer’s have a new license deal with them.

Rajpal feels Ladybird is a unique brand from the sheer retail concept and for the logo. “The ladybird is actually a bug. It’s a beautiful interpretation of black and red. The whole identity of the store and the logo makes it exciting and tempting for children. The kind of retail concept we are doing is unique. When children shop in a Ladybird store, they are not buying clothes. They will get into the whole brand offering. We are also adding a lot of categories and sub-categories in Ladybird,” he explains. The chain has plans to open two Ladybird stores this fiscal. These will be in Gurgaon’s Metropolitan Mall and in Rajouri Garden in New Delhi.

That’s not all on the anvil is entry to MBOs as well. Rajpal avers, “We will start the MBO channel with Ladybird. We have had huge enquiries but will go slowly since we want to do justice to the brand. We want to do it in a proper shop-in-shops format. We will be in all the leading MBOs of Delhi like Ritu Wears.”
Mark Ecko, the other international brand in their portfolio will also get major push this year. The mother brand is Ecko Unlimited, a youth brand targeted at the 14- to 24-year-olds. The women’s line is called Ecko Red. So within an Ecko Unlimited store there is Unlimited for boys and Red for women. The brand is not a mass brand, therefore, it will be positioned as a premium one to begin with then they will see how it progresses over a year. Rajpal adds “We are opening four stores of Ecko. We will test them and refine the business model. Next fiscal, you will see a major expansion in Ecko and Ladybird.” With Ecko they may do one or two stores in Punjab but primarily it’s going to be Delhi-NCR. In Delhi it will be launched in DLF Promenade, City Square, Rajouri Garden and some other locations.