Sunnex, Sturdy: Aim to be complete casual wear brands

Sunnex and Sturdy the two brands from Annapurna Apparels are planning to extend their product portfolio to include T-shirts, casual shirts and shorts. Their ultimate aim is to be complete casual wear solutions provider by 2020 and be one of the best

in business, in terms of products and add-on services. As Sunil Mehta, MD, Annapurna Apparels opines, “The apparel industry has a lot of potential and by the year 2020, our vision is to provide complete casual wardrobe with T-shirts, shirts, short pants, cargos along with jeans and trousers.”

Meanwhile, the company is focusing on expanding its pan-India and global footprint. As Mehta explains, “We are focusing on enhancing our distribution network. At present, we distribute in 14 states across the country. We have a retail network of about 1,100-1,200 MBOs and a chain of factory outlets in Southern India. In the future, we are looking at franchising to fuel our retail expansion. We also supply to various LFS in Southern India through our distributors.”

The company currently exports to the UAE, Bahrain, Saudi Arabia, Kuwait and other countries under the brand name of Sunnex Jeans. And it is in the process of exploring other international markets such as Africa and South East Asia.

According to Mehta, more than 20 years ago, when the jeans culture was just about starting in India, one of the early players who joined the race and actually defined the momentum of growth was Annapurna Apparels. The company, though started in 1980, was earlier engaged in manufacturing trousers. Today, it manufactures jeans under the brand name Sunnex Jeans and Sturdy Jeans.

With complete in-house state-of-the-art manufacturing facilities, the company is geared up to grow faster and meet the challenges in the domestic and booming export markets. Every product manufactured by them goes through various quality checks right from the inward raw material to outgoing finished goods. While Sunnex is a more established and well known brand targeted at consumers between 25 to 50 years, Sturdy is more youth focused and is targeted at the consumer aged 18 and 40 years.