Innerwear brands set to go 'exclusive'

Competition in the rapidly-growing Rs 5,000 crore innerwear market in India is set to hot up further as some of the biggest brands in the segment will now be seen in exclusive showrooms. Exclusive stores for innerwear brands are a fairly recent phenomenon with most brands being sold through multi-brand outlets and departmental stores.

Some of the lingerie brands, which will be launched in exclusive stores, include Enamor and Triumph.

Page Industries, which launched exclusive stores for the US-based innerwear brand Jockey a few months back, plans to increase the number of outlets.

Gokaldas Intimatewear Pvt Ltd, which owns Enamor, will also launch a French lingerie brand Barbara.

The Bangalore-based Gokaldas Intimatewear plans to launch Barbara in the next six months. Barbara is a brand owned by the French firm Barbara.

Enamor was launched by Gokaldas Intimatewear, a JV between Barbara and Gokaldas Images in which Gokaldas Images has a majority stake, in 2003.

The brand, which will cost over Rs 2,000, will target the upper-middle class segment which is aware of foreign brands and is used to shopping abroad. "This is for the customer used to wearing foreign brands and lives in big cities," said Sumir J Hinduja, director of Gokaldas Intimatewear. The company will be the Indian licensee for the brand.

Barbara is being launched as part of the company's expansion plan, which includes opening exclusive Enamor showrooms. At present Enamor is sold in department stores and malls. The company will launch four Enamor stores by the end of this fiscal in Ahmedabad and Delhi, and then look at Bangalore. It will spend about Rs 3 crore on the first four stores. The company plans to take the number of these exclusive stores to about 40 in the next three years. However, it will only focus on the urban markets for these brands and will open these stores in the 8-12 big cities in the country.

Gokaldas also plans to launch new product categories under its Enamor brand like sleepwear and nightwear. In India, Enamor competes with Triumph, the French brand Etam and one of the oldest foreign lingerie brands present in the country, Lovable.

Last month, the world's second largest lingerie brand Triumph had announced it would open exclusive outlets. Jockey has also been launched in exclusive outlets in the past few months.

Triumph said it is looking for an Indian partner to open exclusive outlets. The company plans to open exclusive outlets in 6-8 cities by the end of this fiscal. The stores will be between 1,500-2,000 sq ft.

Page Industries, which is the licensee for Jockey in India, has about 22 exclusive Jockey showrooms in India at present. It plans to take these to 40 by the end of this year. The company, which is also planning to set up a facility in Bangalore to manufacture Jockey products, says it will spend about Rs 22 crore on brand building and opening exclusive outlets this fiscal. The stores will be located in malls and high streets, and will be opened across the country.