Latin Quarters plans to foray East Asian and Middle East market, shortly

Latin Quarters (LQ) is a prominent high street fashion brand offering sustainable fashion for women from different realms of life. Initiative by Rahul Bhalla and Saurabh Jhinga back in 2006, the brand has created niche through its modern, tactical and functional designs in all these years. In an exclusive conversation, Saurabh Jhingan, Co-founder and C.O.O of the brand shares exclusive insights along with his strategies to stay ahead in competition:

What was the inspiration behind launching brand 'Latin Quarters'?  Why you only targeting women fashion which is highly competitive?

 LQ was incepted in 2006 when there was a severe shortage of women’s western wear brands. Most of the women’s brands were focusing either on ethnic wear or indo western wear. Our research showed that there is a great potential in women’s western wear market as more and more women were moving away from ethnic wear.  Based on these factors we concluded that there was a need for a Women’s western wear brand that understand the Indian woman’s fashion needs, her design sensibilities and body types while at the same time  is passionate about delivering a high quality fashion product that anyone can be proud of wearing.

Till date, we are operating through 10 EBO and over 95 point of sales. LQ marks its presence in 22 cities across the country.

What is your take on present fashion market in India and how do you see the market growing in next five years?

With plethora of brands, the fashion market has a great potential in the coming years. The customers get lot of options to cater to their fashion needs. To tap the entire market, the online presence is also very imperative. As people are turning increasingly net savvy and internet penetration is increasing exponentially, online purchases are also bound to grow proportionally.

Throw light upon your retail store including layout and designs?

 The average size of the store varies from800 sq feet to 1500 sq ft. Our stores have been designed to create a special atmosphere that will allow the client to feel the pleasure of buying fashion by transforming space into brand environments through architecture, fixtures, lighting & signage. The store design involves brand direction through concept books & visual guidelines. We strive to create an exciting, engaging & evolving environment that enhances the service experience in each of our stores.

 What is the average ticket size of your store? 

 The average ticket size of our store is Rs.2000.

Indian fashion market is constantly forayed by high profile international brands, how do you see the trend remain continue?

 Our knowledge of the consumer helps us design products that are specifically geared towards the domestic consumer. International chains can only deliver product that is designed for western audiences and do not keep in mind the Indian comfort, sensibilities, sizes or body type. Another big advantage we have over bigger international brands is quicker turnaround time where due to our smaller size we are able to react to the market much quicker than a larger store is able to. Besides with the women’s western wear market is growing at such a rate that there is room for multiple players to succeed, provided you can deliver a product that women want to wear.

How you promoting your brand at various channels?

We keep on carrying different promotional activities at our stores. At different intervals of the year, we run different schemes for our valuable customers. Most successful one is the Style Rewards in which we reward the customer on shopping for a certain amount and on next purchase they get rewarded with some percentage off. Though we have all the year round promotions for our patrons, but from October onwards we come up with various promotions to facilitate buying during the holiday season. Also, we do constant ATL & BTL activities as per our marketing calendar.

You are presented in online as well as offline channels, which medium you find more leveraging and why? And, through which channel you wish to expand in future?

LQ has recently come up with E-Commerce site, and so far the response is quite positive. Since we are on a nascent stage with the E-commerce, talking about  numbers in terms of revenue against offline channels would be early at this stage. Being a part of internet savvy generation ecommerce surely has a bright future. We look for brand expansion through all the channels whether online or offline.

 Any plans to go overseas?

 As overseas expansion plan, we are working on taking Latin Quarters to East Asian & Middle East countries.