Raymond to go Omnichannel; launches mini TRS stores in Tier II, beyond

With the Omnichannel mantra gaining ground in India and consumers living in a parallel digital and physical worlds, brands are fast turning the spotlight on their e-strategies. One such brand is textile major Raymond Apparel, which plans to launch its Omnichannel strategy within next four-five months.
In an exclusive interview with Indiaretailing, Director – Business Development, Raymond, Sanjeev Rao said, “We consider digital as an enabler and we are getting into a complete Omnichannel roll out across all the brands.”
He further added, “Another reason behind going Omnichannel is that we want to give customers flexibility to decide how they want to do the shopping.”
Raymond will be facilitating Omnichannel services like if the customer likes any product at any of Raymond store, the brand will be happy to deliver it at home and if the customer likes something online but wants to touch and feel the product and try it then the brand will be providing doorstep delivery.
Apart from this, Raymond is also launching mini TRS stores in Tier II, III, IV and V cities.
Explaining the concept of the stores, Rao revealed, “We are launching it under franchisee model where the stores will be spread across 600 sq.ft to 800 sq.ft and at times it can 1,000 sq.ft depending on the size of the town.
He further added, “We have created a new line of merchandise for these towns which are not very expensive. So trousers will cost somewhere around Rs 1,000, shirts starting at Rs 599 and we have also put up a digital interface for consumers there because if you do not find anything that interests you then we will help you to look out what you like.”
There will be more than 150 SKUs in these stores. Not only fabrics, mini TRS will also provide custom tailoring. The brand plans to launch 150 stores in phase I and then another 150 in phase II. By the end of this fiscal year, it plans to open 80-100 mini TRS stores.