Van Heusen To Open 30 Innerwear & Athleisure Exclusive Stores

Aditya Birla Fashion and Retail’s Van Heusen Innerwear & Athleisure business entered the Indian market in September last year. The brand is doing well since then and consolidated their presence in the South part of India given their long presence mother brand Madura Fashion in Bangalore.

Puneet Kumar Malik, COO, Innerwear Business, Aditya Birla Fashion and Retail feels that today consumers have become more fashion conscious versus products. Earlier they were more price driven and now they are more brands driven.

Malik shared that today’s consumers don’t think innerwear and athleisure as a pure need but they would like to buy something which they can feel good and look good.

In order to serve the consumers with more aspirational products, Van Heusen is all set to expand its footprints across the country. The brand entered the innerwear and athletic leisure market in September 2016. The brand is present in more than 1700 outlets so far.

Apart from this, the brand rides on their elite distribution network which is present in the form of 200 Van Heusen outlets, 300 Planet Fashion outlets and more than 150 Pantaloons outlets.

Malik said, “The brand is growing at a significant space. We have launched in the south and we have seen athletic leisure contributing to 30-35% business at this point in time.”

Massive Market 
With the growing market, the brand is coming up with more offerings as they see fashion products are well accepted. The market for this segment is growing significantly. Last year the market size of Innerwear and athletic leisure was around Rs 7000 crores and this year it is somewhere near Rs 10000 crores. It is growing at the pace of 13-14 per cent per year.

The mid premium and premium segment is growing significantly related to the economy segment which is already there. In the current situation, the economy segment has the 50 per cent market share while mid premium and premium has 40 per cent market share and super premium counts for 10 percent.

The mid premium and premium segment is growing faster and the economy segment is growing at eight to nine per cent every year.

Jockey has been the only player which has introduced mid premium and premium segment in the country and rest of the players like Rupa, Amul and others are playing in the economy segment.

Malik sees Jockey as their biggest competitor but he said, “We are playing in a space where we are little above than Jockey.”

In coming two to three years, Van Heusen is eyeing to become significant number two across India.

Expanding their reach
Van Heusen is planning to open 30 exclusive innerwear stores across the country. Seventy percent of the stores will be in metros and the rest will be tier I&II cities. “We have seen the growth coming from tier I&II cities and that is why we have a project Bharat in Planet fashion and we open stores in tier I&II cities.  There are 150 stores of Planet fashion in these cities.” He said.

All the new stores that Van Heusen will come up with will demand an investment of around Rs 20 lakhs including capital and stock. Seventy percent of their upcoming stores will be franchise led and the remaining will be company owned and company operated.

Malik highlighted that online counts for 10-15 % of their total sales and he is confident about its growth to 20-25 percent in the coming three years.

First focus for Puneet Malik is to expand their distribution nationally and once it reaches to it full strength they will expand their thoughts over promotion and marketing and increase their spend significantly.

When asked if the innerwear business is profitable or en route to profit? He replied, “We should be able to make money in a year or so.” At this point of time, he is in the process of building the brand through investment in all the possible areas such as promotions, expansion and distribution.