Celebrity Fashions, which owns Indian Terrain, the popular menswear brand, is re-structuring its business to manage the impact of limited consumer spending. To start with, the brand has withdrawn its women’s wear range from the market within a year of its launch. Indian Terrain had introduced women’s wear in mid-2008. However for now, the company wants to focus on menswear and has no plans of introducing any new product category this year.
Charath Narsimhan, chief executive officer of Indian Terrain, told Financial Chronicle, “For the time being, we want to focus on our menswear line because we don’t have the bandwidth to support new initiatives. Therefore, we have decided to go slow on the women’s wear line. We are in the process of phasing out women’s wear and I can’t say when we will be able to get back to this business again.”
In an interview to Financial Chronicle last year, the company had said that the women’s wear range is expected to become a Rs 75 crore category in three years. The company has also put on hold the plans of introducing international brands in India through licensing.
The Chennai-based garment exporter wants to expand Indian Terrain in tier- II and III cities and the expansion will happen thr-ough the franchisee ro-ute. Narsimhan said, “We are in-clined towards expansion in smaller cities because we see better traction there. Also the franchisee model works well, so large part of expansion will come from franchisee.”
At present, the brand operates 30 stores. By the end of 2009, about six stores will be unveiled in Jammu, Raipur, Gangtok, Chan-digarh, Mumbai and Che-nnai. Celebrity Fashions’ revenues came down to Rs 256 crore in financial year 2009 from about Rs 332 crore in financial year 2008.
Source: Financial Chronicle
