Arvind Ltd. reportedly plans to start its online retail journey with two women’s in-house fashion labels, Shuffle and Prime.
The brands aim to compete with foreign fashion brands such as Zara.
Arvind’s online venture will be headed by Rajiv Mehta, Puma India’s former CEO.
Arvind roped in Mehta to spearhead a new venture, Arvind SportLifestyle Ltd, in November 2014, to create new brands mostly to sell online.
The two brands will be sold on Amazon, Flipkart and Snapdeal by the end of October. They will also be sold through Arvind’s planned e-commerce platform, which is likely to be launched in 2016.
Arvind plans to build half a dozen Internet-only fashion brands over the next two years.
In an interview with Indiaretailing conducted earlier this year, J Suresh, Managing Director & CEO, Arvind Lifestyle Brands Limited, had shared the plans about company’s omni-channel framework.
“There is no question that all brick-and-mortar retailers today need to be omni-channel retailers. I mean, one simply has to be an omni-channel retailer now. It’s not like there is a choice. If you look at the top 20 US online retailers, only one — Amazon — is a pure play. All others are omni-channel retailers who started out as brick-and-mortar formats,” Suresh has said then.
“As for Arvind Lifestyle Brands, we are currently developing a robust omni-channel framework — across all portfolio brands — which is to go live in October 2015,” he had informed.
Arvind currently retails brands such as GAP, Nautica, Arrow, Lee and Calvin Klein in India. The retail business accounted for 30% of the company’s INR 7,851 crore revenue in FY 2014-15.
India’s online apparel retail market could touch USD 21.70 billion by 2020 from the current USD 3.90 billion, according to a report by UBS Securities, suggesting significant shift in shopping formats. The numbers are pushing all major retail businesses to focus online.
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