Shoppers Stop banks on private labels for online growth

By

Maverick Martins

Published
May 18, 2017

Leading fashion retail chain Shoppers Stop is looking to build growth through a stronger online presence -one that will be driven by private labels and exclusive brands.

“At a gross margin profitability level, private brands lend more margins but national brands have a higher customer pull. Private brands and exclusive brands alone clock margins of 45-50%,” Govind Shrikhande, MD of Shoppers Stop, told the Economic Times.
 
“Exclusive and private brands will drive the online customer base especially from smaller cities where we are not physically present,” said Shrikhande.

On a company level, the chain clocks gross margins to the tune of 33%. While the contribution of private brands, like Stop, Life, Haute Curry, Vittorio Fratini, Eliza Donatein and Kashish, is 11.5% of sales, exclusive brands contribute 4.1%.

The exclusive brands it sells include Wrogn by Virat Kohli, Desigual, the Spanish fast fashion brand, and Imara by Shraddha Kapoor.
 
Shoppers Stop which is facing stiff competition from e-commerce firms plans to focus aggressively enhance its online play in the coming year and an investment corpus of Rs 60 crore has been carved out for online operations alone.
 
“We have spent Rs 45 crore of the planned Rs 60 crore for ecommerce expansion. The remaining Rs 15 crore will be completely spent this year (FY18),” he said.

The company recently launched Rheson, the brand promoted by Sonam and Rhea Kapoor, exclusively across both its offline and online platforms.