New Delhi: Zara is planning to introduce its home products in India, three people familiar with the plans said. The move comes close on the heels of rivals Stockholm-based Hennes & Mauritz (H&M) and London-based Marks & Spencer launching their home wares in India earlier this year.
“Zara is planning to start selling home products in some of the stores early next year,” said one of the persons. He said the Spanish brand has already intimated some malls – that are home to Zara stores in India – to provide around 5,000 sq ft of additional space in those malls to accommodate Zara Home.
A Zara spokesperson in India declined to comment.
Zara Home sells bed linen, quilts, cushions, curtains, table linens, blankets, bathrobes among a host of other home items.
Home improvement is one of the fastest growing segments in India with young and middle class Indians buying hundreds of thousands of new apartments each year. The younger generations tend to spend a lot on their home decorations as per their tastes.
Earlier this year, Sweden’s H&M introduced its home products as a store-in-store at its outlet in Ambience Mall, Vasant Kunj, New Delhi. The world’s second largest fashion retailer had also launched those products online through its portal hm.com and on Myntra.com in March.
Marks & Spencer Reliance India Pvt. Ltd., a 51-49% joint venture between the UK department store operator and Reliance Retail, had also launched its home and décor offerings in India in March in three of its stores in New Delhi, Bengaluru and Mumbai. Currently, the home products are available in about half-a-dozen M&S outlets and online through the company’s website in addition to Myntra.com. M&S is planning to introduce its home items in 10 more stores in the coming months, IndiaRetailing had reported in August.
Several other M&S stores across India are in various stages of fit-outs and creating spaces to accommodate the company’s home products including bed linen, cushions and dinnerware.
M&S home items are priced in the range Rs 199 (coffee mugs) to Rs 1,499 (bed linens and cushions).
In India Zara is operated by a 51:49 joint venture between Spain’s Inditex Group and Tata-owned Trent Ltd. There is another JV between the two groups for selling Massimo Dutti in India. Inditex Trent currently operates 21 stores in Delhi, Mumbai, Bengaluru, Pune, Surat, Jaipur, Chandigarh, Chennai, Hyderabad, Kolkata and Gurgaon.
In September, IndiaRetailing had reported Zara was planning to introduce its beauty and cosmetics line in India at a time when the sector was heating up with Reliance Retail and Tata Group looking to enter the space.
Since then, Zara has already introduced its beauty items in some of the stores, two of the sources said.
