Globus, the fashion apparel retail chain of Rajan Raheja group, has chalked out Rs 800 crore expansion plans. The company is planning to open over 100 stores across 70 cities in the next five years.
Globus will open 70 stores – each spread across 8,000-10,000 square feet – in tier II cities, while in tier I cities it will have 35 stores averaging 6,000-8,000 square feet each. The expansion will start from cities like Ludhiana, Vashi, Nagpur, Mumbai, Nasik, Rajkot, Jodhpur, Faridabad, Jaipur and Surat. The company is also looking at the first-mover advantage in cities such as Ranchi, Dehradun and Raipur, where no such fashion retailer is present.
The company will launch an e-commerce portal in October to promote its brand. “The online model is comfortable to our audience. We want to leverage our brick-and-mortar model on the e-commerce platform,’’ said Globus CEO Vinay Nadkarni.
Regarding the company’s slow approach in opening stores, Nadkarni said, “We have to build everything from scratch, from sourcing to design studios. Since we have built our backend completely now, we can focus on front-end expansion. There is a very good potential in tier II cities with their increased buying power and increased desire for fashion, and so we are heading there first.”
Globus recently signed Bollywood actor Kareena Kapoor as its new brand ambassador. Another actor, Soha Ali Khan, had earlier endorsed the brand for a while.
These aggressive plans of the company rebuff all industry speculations that Globus was on the verge of closure, or that the group is planning to diversify into different retailing segments other than fashion.