Chennai-headquartered Go Fashion (India) Ltd is planning to increase its offline retail presence in the northern and eastern markets, besides strengthening the number of exclusive branch outlets in Tier-2&3 towns.
“Currently, we have a strong presence in the south and west. We have started increasing our presence in the north and east markets as well,” Gautam Saraogi, CEO, Go Fashion (India) Ltd told BusinessLine.
Go Fashion has an over 8 per cent market share in the women’s bottom-wear segment. The company is engaged in development, design, sourcing, marketing and retailing of a range of women’s bottom-wear products under the brand ‘Go Colors’.
Store addition
In FY22, the company added 54 exclusive brand outlets, to cross the 500 store milestone. The brand also has a strong presence in large format stores such as Reliance Retail, Central, Pantaloons and Unlimited, among others. Currently, 58-60 per cent of Go Colors’ exclusive stores are located in Chennai, Bengaluru, Hyderabad, Mumbai, Pune, Ahmedabad, Delhi and NCR.
“We will continue to invest in expanding our store footprint by adding 120-150 stores every year. The new stores will be in existing markets and we will also focus on expanding in Tier 2&3 markets,” Saraogi said.
Some of the prospective towns in the Tier-2 store expansion include Bilaspur (Chattisgarh), Tezpur (Assam), Ahmednagar (Maharashtra), Dindigul, and Dharmapuri (Tamil Nadu).
Strong offline recovery
Of the total sales, 97 per cent comes from the offline channel and, within that, 72 per cent comes from its own brand stores, while large format stores account for the rest.
Saraogi said the online channel witnessed traction after the pandemic-led restrictions. It now accounts for 3 per cent of total sales and the company is planning to grow this to double digits in the next few years.
“Our offline sales have also recovered to pre-Covid levels. The early months of the pandemic were tough due to restrictions in operating stores. At that point, online sales did pretty well, but now, with Covid cases coming down, we see offline sales making a strong come-back ,” Saraogi added.