Westside goes for a revamp and adds more private labels

Tata Group’s, Trent that operates Westside retail chain, one of India’s largest and fastest growing store chain is revamping the business. As Gaurav Mahajan, CEO Westside India, says, “Westside is progressing very positively and we are going

through an aggressive exercise of revamping our stores.” Apart from revamping and creating a conducive environment for its customers, Westside is also looking at launching an array of in-house brands and private labels. “Private labels and in-house brand format have really worked well for us. There is also lot of activity in launching in house brands. So we as a retail house shall focus on launching a lot of in house brands in many categories. We have seen good traction in sales and customer response to these,” adds Mahajan.
Launched in 1998, the Westside has numerous departments to meet the varied shopping needs of customers. These include men’s, women’s and kids’ wear, footwear, cosmetics, perfumes and bags, household accessories, lingerie and gifts. The company runs 72 Westside departmental stores across Indian in cities like Ahmedabad, Bengalore, Chandigarh, Chennai, Delhi, Gurgaon, Ghaziabad & Noida, among others. It hopes to expand rapidly with similar format stores that offer a fine balance between style and price.

However Mahajan says they are not going for a change in brand positioning, “We are in the business of fashion, in this business you constantly need to keep your product relevant and keep moving forward and keeping pace with the consumer and its changing preferences. So I would not call it a change in the positioning of the brand. But there is a lot of focus on the fashionability of our products and the quality of the products and the environment we provide in store.”

Talking about the retail spread Mahajan opines, “We have a wide footprint and are present in major markets. We are going aggressively to Tier II, III cities. Although we already have a sizeable footprint in these cities we are just multiplying our presence in some metros and going in to each of the new markets within these metros.” Currently Westside has 72 stores and there are about 8 to 10 planned for this financial year.

Talking about what lead to this revamp Mahajan explains, “India is a dynamic market where the consumer is constantly evolving. And we being in the market for a long time work hard to remain close to our consumers. In the business of fashion, a brand needs to constantly stay relevant to its consumer. So we feel the revamp will help us come closer to our customers.”

While private labels have worked well for Westside, Mahajan says they plan to extend this to other categories especially beauty and kids’ wear, which are strong category within Westside.