Fabindia gears up to follow high-growth path

The Rs 1,000-crore homegrown lifestyle brand, Fabindia, has set itself a target of increasing its customer base from 1.5 million to 10 million customers within the next four to five years.

"The target is also to double our revenue turnover every two years," says the company's CEO, Subrata Dutta. The agenda is to position itself as a departmental store and not as a niche player.
 
The company has identified three verticals - menswear, women's western wear and home furnishing and furniture - from which it expects a bulk of its revenues. Currently, apparel contributes around 60 per cent to the company's revenues, while home furnishing and furniture contribute another 22 per cent.
 
Though the company is better known for ethnic wear, Dutta says that the plan is to increase its focus on shirts and trousers for men. "Western wear for men comprises 85 per cent of the menswear market and we need to have at least a two per cent market share there in order to grow substantially. However, that doesn't mean that we will not focus on ethnic kurtas." The plan is to offer more stylised versions of the traditional kurtas, he says.
 
Dutta says that despite its image of being a ethnic wear brand, almost 50 per cent of the company's sales in the women's wear category comes from Indo-western fusion clothing. Keeping this trend in mind, the company decided to launch a western wear brand, Fables, earlier this week. Designed by luxury brands designer, Alistair Blair, Fables contains western styled clothes made out of natural Indian fabrics. The company, three years ago, had acquired UK-based apparel brand, East. However, East didn't do well in India, and the company now sells it only in the UK. "The mistake we made with East was that it wasn't Indianised. The styles were too western." Dutta hopes that Fables would contribute at least 10% to the company's revenue within the next 18 months. An average Fable garment is priced between Rs 2,000 to Rs 5,000.
 
On the home furnishing and furniture front, the plan is to set up design studios within the stores. "We are creating an iPad application where we would be able to simulate and show our consumers how their homes would look with Fabindia furnishings and furniture."
 
Fabindia, which has 180 stores in India, is also embarking upon an aggressive expansion strategy outside of India. It has created two global hubs, Singapore and Dubai. While Singapore would service Asia-Pacific, Dubai would cater to the Middle East. The company currently has stores in Singapore, Dubai and UK, and would be soon entering markets such as Philippines and Hong Kong.
 
The company has also been expanding aggressively in tier two and tier three markets in India. In order to deepen its penetration within the country, is has rolled out its franchise business a week ago. "We will work with franchisees to foray into small towns such as Asansol, Jalgaon, Akola etc," says Dutta.