Croma, the electronic retail chain owned by Infiniti Retail, a 100 per cent subsidiary of Tata Group, plans to increase the number of the product categories in its private label to 100 in this fiscal from the present 46.
According to Ajit Joshi, managing director, Infiniti Retail, Croma's private label brand called 'handpicked by Croma' will see more products getting introduced in the personal care category in the festive season of Diwali.
Launching the first two croma stores of Chennai, he told mediapersons that Croma's private label co-exists with 180 other brands and the share of private label in the share of revenue from the private label will be kept below 20 per cent. “We are introducing niche personal care product categories like jewellery cleaner and wine cooler which needs lesser R&D,” he noted.
Croma will not introduce mobile handsets under its private label, essentially because of its collaboration with the Japanese partner, NTT, according to him. At the same time, the brand has its own range of laptops which are 10 to 15 per cent cheaper than the competing brands.
Croma also plans to ramp up the numbers of Croma Zip, the group's smaller format store that covers an area of 2,500 sq ft to 6,500 sq ft, in this year with an investment of Rs 24 crore. Out of 22 new stores that will be added this year, 12 stores will be of Croma Zip. At present, there are only 3 croma Zip stores in the country, 2 of which are in the International airports of Mumbai and Delhi.
“Zip needs an investment of Rs 2 crore, including infrastructure and inventory whereas the large-format Croma stores that is spread over 10,000 to 15,000 square feet will need around Rs 3 crore for infrastructure and inventory apart from the space value,” Joshi said.
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On expanding the foot print to tier 2 cities, Ajit Joshi said that the retail group will open only one store in tier 2 cities for this year, which will be in Rajkot.
"We have one distribution centre for around 10 to 12 stores. So it will be practical to increase our foot print in the cities where we are already present and dominate that market than to start operations in unknown markets," he noted.