"We will continue to focus on men's category": Suresh Nambiar

Pepe Jeans London has entered the North India market with its new range of premium innerwear. The new segment by Pepe Jeans is the result of an equal joint venture between Pepe Jeans Europe BV and Dollar Industries Limited. The joint venture company ‘Pepe Jeans Innerfashion Private Limited’is known to manufacture and market premium range of fashion innerwear and Athleisure for men under the brand name “Pepe Jeans”.

Launched across South India region in the first phase; the collection is now available at exclusive 1200 + multi brand outlets, 110 Pepe Jeans exclusive brand stores, select departmental stores, along with Ecommerce portals like Amazon, Myntra & Flipkart. Also present at launch, Suresh Nambiar, Chief Executive Officer, Pepe Jeans Innerfashion sheds light on the growth strategy for innerwear category.

Being denim focused brand how is the experience working with innerwear category?

It’s been great considering we did own set of research pertaining to category including the active players, current trends  and whole cycle of research and development before arriving with this category. We are hardly year and half old in this category, and so far the response has been exceptional.

These days almost everybody has started doing this category. In the fierce competition, how do you plan to settle your niche?  

We are an apparel brand and this category is an extension of existing product ranges. For us innerwear is an add- on category under the apparel brand. Having said that, we saw a huge gap in mid premium segment in this category and we wish carve our niche in this space. As far as distribution is concerned, we do not plan to have any exclusive distribution, we will continue to retail through Pepe store.

Any plans to foray into women’s wear and kids’ wear?

For now, the focus is on men’s category only. Gradually, we wish to focus on kids’ category.

Is this strategic choice not to go women’s category? Considering the huge size, don’t you think, you are missing an opportunity here?

As of now, we just wish to focus on single category until the category is not matured. We will not be able to justify with any, if we will divide our focus in various categories at same time. At the point we stand now, we wish to foray into kids range sometime thereafter; we might look at women’s category.

As the part of distribution strategy, would you be exploring SIS model with departmental chains including Shoppers Stop, Central amongst others?

As far as our distribution is concerned, we are already there at all the leading marketplaces. As far as departmental chains are concerned we are there as including, and where we are not, the discussions are on.

Do you think innerwear is the apt category for online channel since consumer cannot be assured about many factors including right sizing and hygiene factor?

As the brand, our strategy is to grow across both channels. However, the online channel is growing at a very rapid pace, there is a phenomenal growth in this space. Right sizing is a very minuscule issue these days, people are already aware about their correct sizing. However, our 80% traction still generates from offline channel, but online is a huge opportunity which is largely untapped.

Going forward what are the plans to expand the brands across the channels?

We have aggressive plans to expand via offline channel as the part of strategy we are collaborating with leading departmental stores. Innerwear contributes around 13-14% in the overall revenue of the brand. We aim to increase the number. Also, After a huge success of the initial launch in the south of India, the brand is now expanding into north India and we are positive to receive the same amount of appreciation that we got from the initial launch’. The brand has always worked on strategic progression by tapping new markets across each region having immense growth potential.