Having established Woodland as a major outdoor footwear and accessories product, owners Aero Club are aggressively focusing on promoting the luxury footwear brand WOODS to take on players such as Hush Puppies and Clarks.
“Though WOODS products have been in existence for about a decade, only in the last 18 months that the company has given a push to this luxury lifestyle product,” Harkirat Singh, MD, Aero Club, told BusinessLine .
WOODS products were mostly available along with Woodland, but now, exclusive identity is being given to the brand.
Delhi has two exclusive WOODS stores, and there are three outlets in South India- at Palladium Mall (Chennai), Mantri Square (Bengaluru) and Lulu Mall (Kochi) – with afourth coming up at Sarath City Capital Mall in Hyderabad.
Branching out
“We will have WOODS exclusive stores only in major malls, and plan to open another 15 by year end. Discussions are going on with various mall owners,” said Singh. Each store costs ₹1-1.5 crore, he added.
Cost of WOODS men’s and women’s shoes range between ₹3,500 and ₹11,000.
“We want to focus more on women products with a complete package, including matching bags and footwear,” he said.
WOODS products contribute about 25 per cent of the company’s revenue, which is expected to be around ₹1,400 crore for this financial year, a 10 per cent growth over the previous financial year.
The Woodland brand is also growing, but the company expected WOODS to contribute nearly 30 per cent in the next couple of years, he said.
The company, which gets nearly 30 per cent revenue from international operations with presence in West Asia, Russia and South East, plans to expand into new markets.
On reports that the company plans to work with partners, Singh said to expand in markets like China in large scale will be through partners. However, no concrete decision has been taken, he said.