Fashion aspirations of the growing numbers of customers across the country’s tier-2 and tier-3 cities has prompted affordable fashion brand, Posh to target a store expansion plan that will take the brand to a Rs 1,000-crore company by 2018.
“Across the smaller towns like Satara, Raipur, Meerut, Mangalore, Puri, Aurangabad, Palakkad and Vizianagaram, there is a strong aspiration towards being fashionable. And the aspirations in these small-towns are far superior to those in urban centers”, says Jagannath P, promoter of Bangalore-based Speciality Retail which owns the Posh retail brand.
Jagannath, a former head of Walmart’s India operations, says the Indian organized retail market resembled the European and US markets of the 1960s, promising major opportunities for retail brands in the coming years. “The latent demand for affordable fashion is evident across smaller towns in the country, and our own experience in retailing in a town like Mangalore has been way above our expectations”, says Jagannath.
Jagannath and co-promoter Bobby George Mathai said the Posh brand had five stores now, with plans to add another five by mid-December, and a target to reach 100 stores by 2013 and 500 stores by 2018. They said the firm was in talks for private equity funding for which talks were on.
Posh has five verticals, namely fashion, kids, home décor, lighting, and women’s handbags and fashion accessories. The brand is targeting a Rs 1,000-crore turnover from 500 stores by 2018. Jagannath said the prospects in retail were bright, considering that even now only 9 per cent of the domestic market was in the organized sector, and that the near future would see this segment grow substantially.
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