Central & Brand Factory gear up for ‘back to normal’ sales in the upcoming festive season

As the Unlock#4 gathers pace, sales at leading department store Central and off-price retailer, Brand Factory are growing at a faster pace every month, month-on-month. Future Lifestyle Fashion Limited, that operates the Central, Brand Factory networks and markets some of India’s leading fashion brands is gearing up to bring back the business ‘back to normal’ by the end of the upcoming festive season.
As on date, the company has re-opened around 95 percent of stores, after taking all necessary precautions that protect the health and safety of its employees and customers. The company has re-opened 41 Central stores, 101 Brand Factory stores, 75 aLL stores that cater to plus-size customers and 90 exclusive brand outlets (EBOs) of its own flagship fashion brands like Lee Cooper, Indigo Nation, Scullers, Jealous 21, among others.
Almost 1 million customers walked in at Brand Factory, Central and aLL stores in the month of August, across the country. This helped Central increase its sales in August by more than 33 percent compared to the previous month of July. Similarly, Brand Factory increased its sales by around 50 percent in August, compared to the month of July. Plus size fashion retail chain, aLL has more than doubled its sales in August, compared to the previous month. Much of this increase in sales were driven by the company’s flagship fashion brands like Lee Cooper, Indigo Nation, Scullers and Jealous 21.
Vishnu Prasad, Managing Director, Future Lifestyle Fashions says, “All our stores are getting ready with new fashion for the festive, as well as the wedding season. To scale this up further, we will use our strong data base of 6 million customers to create initiatives that will cater to their online and in-store needs.”
E-commerce also contributed to an increasingly larger share of the company’s revenues and has grown by 72 percent month-on-month, since April 2020. The company’s e-commerce portals, AllOnline.in , BrandFactoryOnline.in and MyCentral.in now provide the entire range of merchandize and brands available, along with a similar availability on Amazon Fashion portal.
The fashion sector has been among the hardest hit businesses, since the onset of the pandemic. The entire store and supply chain network were shut during the lockdown. As the unlock began, the company’s focus has been on training its staff and adhering to local government and WHO norms to ensure highest levels of health and safety for employees and customers, while opening stores and operations in a measured manner.
In June 2020, the company was able to reach only 12 percent of the sales it had posted in June 2019. This percentage has steadily increased every month, and crossed 50 percent in the month of August. The month of October marks the beginning of the festive season across the country and fashion brands are gearing up with fresh fashion collections and merchandize that go with the celebrations. This therefore also marks a critical step towards getting back to the normal.