Kidswear brand Toon Kidz is looking to scale up its presence from 28 outlets to 150 by the end of this year. “The company is geared up to have 150 EBOs in the current year. We will have these EBOs opened in A and B cities of India,” said Venkat RV, MD, Toon Kidz to IndiaRetailing.
Meanwhile, most of the proposed stores will be franchisee-owned. “We are sure that franchising is the best suitable plan for the apparel industry. All the leading brands world wide follows the same route and it is a proven business model over a period of time,” added Venkat.
Talking further about the average investment per store, Venkat disclosed, “The investment required per store will be Rs 16 lakh to 25 lakh. The average retail space per store will be 1,000 square feet.”
Discussing the business model of Toon Kidz, Venkat informed, “Our company is offering minimum guaranteed returns on the project i.e., 18 per cent on the investments plus the total operational cost. This is a very strong point of the whole business model.”
About company’s overseas operations, Venkat said, “In the Gulf, we have our presence in 85 LFS formats and 3 EBOs are coming up. We have 6 EBO stores getting launched in Egypt.”
Toon Kidz offers ready made apparels and lifestyle accessories for kids through the network of EBOs, LFS and MBOs. The company also retails through Lifestyle and Reliance Trends. It also has an agreement with Cartoon Network, Pogo and Spacetoons, whereby they can make use of some of their famous cartoon characters in their apparel. The brand is planning to make use of characters like Popeye, Ben10, Bob the Builder, Powerpuf f Girls.
ToonKidz has in its product basket apparels, sleepwear, innerwear, bed and bath, rainwear, accessories, school and fashion bags, toys, games, stationery, activity kits, wall paints, PC games and story books.
On the effect of slowdown on the company, Venkat said, “Our sales are not affected during this period and especially being in the children segment, we are seeing a growth in the sales. Currently seeing at the correction process happening in the real estate cost, we are planning to open more stores as this trend would increase the profit margin of our franchisees. This is because earlier the major percentage of the margins was eaten by the real estate cost.”
According to Venkat R, “The kids wear market is estimated at worth over Rs 288 billion and is annually growing at 18 per cent. The urban kids wear market is estimated to be about 60 per cent of the total kids wear market.”
— Shailesh Shah
