Welspun India plans to enter the luxury segment in home textile with UK-based brand Christy, through its subsidiary Welspun Retail. Christy, best described as England’s original luxury towel manufacturer, was acquired by Welspun India in 2006, marking its entry into the premium home textile segment in Europe.
Rajesh Mandawewala, Managing Director, Welspun India, said, “We are in advanced stages of our business plan to bring Christy in the Indian market. There is a luxury market in this country and our target would be the affluent and well-travelled customer.” The brand would be in the area of soft home furnishings with products ranging from towels and bed sheets to rugs and bedding.
Christy has 70 standalone stores and 40-odd shop-in-shop formats in the UK but the brand would enter India in the latter format. Besides, the likely entry of foreign retailers such as Walmart and Tesco is also expected to help Welspun in selling its products through these retail chains. “Walmart, Tesco and IKEA are our biggest clients as we supply to their private labels. With FDI being allowed in retail, we expect these foreign chains to help in selling our home textile products through their formats,” said Mandawewala.
Welspun entered the domestic retail business in 2003 with the launch of Spaces, a range of home textiles for the Indian market and had set up standalone stores. It had also introduced a discounted format under WelHome which was subsequently discontinued. Today it has changed its distribution model and Spaces now exists as a shop-in-shop format across department stores such as Lifestyle and Shoppers Stop.
“We have learnt it the hard way in India and realised in home textiles only the shop-in-shop format works. Since we were losing money through standalone stores, we have moved away from this distribution model,” he added. The Spaces brand of home textiles is now extended to tier 2 & 3 cities with chances of even being taken to the neighbouring countries.
“We have managed to get mildly profitable in the domestic market by tweaking our distribution model. Spaces is a Rs 100-crore brand today but once it crosses Rs 500 crore, we intend taking it to countries such as Japan and Korea where we have free trade agreements,” he said. Spaces has 250 points of sales and would be adding 100 more every year.