Future Brands, the wholly-owned subsidiary of the Kishore Biyani-owned Future Group, is entering the lingerie segment with its private label brand Mohina. The brand will be launched by the end of this month. “Brand Mohina will blend Indian imagery and reservations along with the functional aspects. It will target the mainstream audience,” Santosh Desai, managing director and CEO, Future Brands, said.
The company is also planning to enter into two new verticals of private labels by the end of the current financial year. Among various categories that it is mulling over are food & beverages, home products and kids wear. “We still are in discussions about the categories that we would like to venture into. Whatever the segment, our offering will target the middle class populace with affordable price points,” Desai added.
However, in the wake of the economic slowdown, the company has postponed the plans to roll out the private labels outside its own stores. “The private labels will be rolled out in other stores only after 10-12 months,” said Desai. He said that the private labels registered a growth rate of only 30 per cent against the expected rate of 60 per cent.
The company would focus on three of its private labels for advertisement– Tasty Treat, apparel brand Rig and its consumer durable brand Koryo. “We want to create consumer preference for our brand. As it’s not possible to do it for all the 18 brands at a time, we want to take only a couple of them at one go,” said Desai. The company would aggressively market Koryo and plans to triple its volume in the next two years. The sales figure for Koryo for the previous year was Rs 100 crore.
The company hopes to achieve a growth of 35 per cent in the present financial year.
Source: Financial Chronicle
