Biz likely to be 100% in FY22: Lifestyle CEO

Lifestyle, part of Dubai-based retail and hospitality conglomerate Landmark Group, expects its business to come back to normal in the next fiscal, hoping to return to its normal rhythm of opening seven-eight stores per year once many of the new malls start getting operational in India.

The company currently has over 75 stores in the country. This year it has launched three stores in Mangalore, Lucknow and Guwahati — which is its first store in the northeast.

Rishi Vasudev, CEO, Lifestyle & Home Centre, said the stores are recording a sharp decline in footfall compared to the last year due to coronavirus scare, but online sales are witnessing strong traction. “Currently, we are getting footfalls which are half of last year but with much higher conversion and bill values.

Customers coming in are serious shoppers with high intent. This is leading to 55-60% business. We believe in the festive season footfalls will increase to 65-70% leading to 80-85% of last year’s business. Our online store is seeing strong traction with 2X growth over last year,” Vasudev told FE.

On the company’s plan for opening new stores in the next two years, he said, “Our cadence of opening about 7-8 stores per year will resume once many of the new malls start getting operational. For the current quarter, we are expecting about 80-85% business recovery. For the year FY 2021-22, we are looking at business coming back to 100% of our regular business. We plan to grow double-digit during subsequent years.” With an omni-channel strategy, it is currently delivering products to its customers in over 19,000 pin codes.

Asked which are the categories witnessing growth during the Covid-hit period, Vasudev said, “Categories like the ‘work-from-home’ collection, lounge wear and athleisure are popular. Kidswear has also grown with the demand for everyday wear and casuals increasing. We have also seen denims and denim wear gain a lot of traction. Moreover, with the festive season upon us, categories like ethnic wear is also gaining a lot of traction.”

The company is making its collections accessible through options like Lifestyle Style Express & Lifestyle Pujo Express, which is a mobile fashion store that makes the collection accessible to customers at their doorstep.