Danish sports lifestyle brand, Hummel International has entered the Indian retail market. The company opened five franchise stores in Bengaluru, Pune, Chennai, Surat and Amritsar. Hummel will invest $5.5 million (Rs 38.5 crore) in its first year of operations in India and open 10 more stores in the current fiscal year. Hummel will take on other popular sports lifestyle brands like Nike, Adidas, Reebok, Puma and Nautica, to name a few.

Targetted at millennials, the 1,700 sq ft highstreet store in Bengaluru was the first to be formally launched by the company on Saturday along with Kartik Aaryan, Bollywood actor and brand ambassador of Hummel India. Summer 2019 collection featuring Hummel’s flagship categories – sneakers, jackets and hoodies, as well as track pants, tees, slippers, bags, accessories and sports shoes are available for customers in the price range of Rs 900 to Rs 14,000. Although the company offers 6000 SKUs (stock keeping units) for men, women and kids globally, in India it will start with 850 SKUs for men and women only.

“Hummel merchandise was available on Jabong and Myntra in 2016 but, we stopped selling directly to both the platforms in 2017 because we had no pricing control. Three months ago, we listed our merchandise on Amazon and Flipkart via our partner ND Commerce, which manages our online stores and handles pricing control too. Which means, if customers receive discounts on our end-of-season products on Amazon or Flipkart, they will receive the same discounts in our physical stores as well. This is our first promise to Indian customers” Soumava Naskar, Managing Director, Hummel India Private Limited told BusinessLine.

The company is investing $5.5 million in the first year towards warehousing, logistics, back-end operations and marketing. It is expecting to garner Rs 20 crore in sales this fiscal. The search is on for store locations in malls in Mumbai and Delhi and the company is also identifying locations in Hyderabad, Lucknow and Ludhiana to set up stores. Hummel’s mall stores are planned to be 800 sq ft – 900 sq ft in carpet area and its high-street stores will be over 1,500 sq ft.

With over 95 years of heritage in sportswear and lifestyle, Hummel is one of the oldest, team sports brand in the business and introduced football cleats way back in the 1920s. “While Hummel is known as a team sports brand in Europe, in India, it is positioned as a sports lifestyle brand, as millennials in India like to make style statements wearing sports lifestyle brands,” said Naskar.

Owned by the Danish Thornico Group, Hummel is currently present in over 35 countries, has over 250 mono-brand stores and expects to end this calendar year with $1.5 billion in turnover.

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