)
Adventure gear brand Woodland is expanding its footprint in smaller towns in order to achieve faster growth.
The company is now opening outlets even in the tier-III centre across the country, including Uttar Pradesh.
In UP, Woodland is expanding in several suburban and tier-III markets, including Unnao, Gonda, Basti, Sitapur, Basti etc, besides penetrating deeper in the existing markets.
"The trend of smaller towns catching up with its bigger counterparts in organised retail has been witnessed in the last 2-3 years," Woodland managing director Harkirat Singh told Business Standard here.
He attributed the phenomenon to rising brand awareness and higher disposable income in the smaller centres, which have emerged as the new growth centres.
Currently, the company has about 500 owned stores apart from almost 5,000 multi-brand outlets (MBO) selling its products. In UP, it has about 50 stores with three dozen more in the pipeline during this fiscal.
"Since the rentals are quite high in bigger cities, we have to consider the viability of the stores as well," he noted.
Besides, the company has presence in e-commerce, with online sales contributing about 12 percent to its revenues.
Woodland has point of sales in international markets through outlets and shop-in-shop concepts in Hong Kong, the Gulf and European countries.
The company has factories in Uttarakhand, Himachal Pradesh and UP (Noida). Recently, Woodland has launched a new product range Techno-Glacial Collection 2015.
