Lee Cooper India to expand presence in tier 2 and 3 cities, grow EBO presence

By

Isabelle Crossley

Published
Aug 9, 2017

As rural retail demand increases, Lee Cooper is expanding to non-metro cities and upping its online presence as womenswear and children’s wear sales flourish.

Lee Cooper India is part of future Lifestyles Fashions and sells a range of casualwear with denim as the focus. For bottom wear, denim makes up 90 percent of sales and the figure is at 50 percent for top wear.

The brand’s main customer base is male but there has recently been a surge in their womenswear and children’s’ wear sections, according to Hetal Kotak, CEO of Future Lifestyles Fashions who stated, “Our women’s line has got a very exciting response with us being by far the best accepted brand in key premium retail chains like Central and our kids range is doing exceptionally well across all channels like Lifestyle and Central.”

The denim label has a presence in over 150 Indian cities including metros like Bengaluru, Mumbai, and New Delhi and most business there comes from department stores.

However, the brand will now shift its focus to Tier 2 and Tier 3 cities as, according to Kotak, “fashion aspiration in Tier 2 and 3 towns is continuously growing and is moving closer to acceptability levels of a metro.”

In terms of how the label plans to expand to more rural areas, Kotak stated that, “We now we plan to rapidly grow the presence of EBOs across select markets.”

Lee Cooper is a British denim brand that was created by Morris Cooper in 1908. The brand launched in India over a decade ago and is widely available in brick and mortar stores.

The brand is currently in the process of expanding on e-commerce platforms such as Amazon, Jabong, and Myntra which, due to their comprehensive delivery services, will also aid the brand in reaching customers in more remote areas.