USPL to focus on the multi-billion dollar celebrity fashion industry
USPL to focus on the multi-billion dollar celebrity fashion industry

Founded in April 2012, Universal Sportsbiz Pvt. Ltd. (USPL) consolidates as many as three celebrity-fashion and sports-oriented brands under its retail umbrella.

Founded by Anjana Reddy, herself a professional badminton player, and backed by Cricketing legend, Sachin Tendulkar, the portfolio includes WROGN, inspired and co-owned by Virat Kohli, Imara, a contemporary women’s ethnic brand with Shraddha Kapoor, and Collectabillia, which has a dedicated website and deals in fashion accessories which ride high on entertainment and sports does work with sporting icons such as Saina Nehwal, Sania Mirza, Virat Kolhi, Yuvraj Singh, Vishwanathan Anand, Sir Viv Richards and Adam Gilchrist.

Recently, USPL secured $7.5 million (Rs 46 crore) in Series-B funding from its existing investor Accel Partners. The initial investment by Accel partners came in during the brand’s launch in July 2012. Retailer media’s Nitin Abbey spoke to Anjana Reddy, Founder of USPL on the uniqueness of the brands, on celebrities turning entrepreneurs, and its plans with Imara Fusion.    

How are USPL offerings distinct from other fashion lines in the market?

Both WROGN (pronounced ‘Wrong’) and Imara are positioned uniquely in the Indian celebrity fashion industry. WROGN is a break-away youth fashion brand which is inspired by the distinctive sense of style and the youth appeal of cricketing genius, Virat Kohli, and as such, it reflects his brand personality. WROGN is targeted towards open minded and progressive young men, who like to make their own choices in life. The brand is experimental in its ethos and product philosophy. And it encourages the male youth to question the status quo around them. We have made a great start with creating a strong position for WROGN in the men’s casual wear market and our recent brand activation campaign “WROGN auditions” plays an important role in building direct engagement with youth across India, leveraging Virat as an ‘Anchor’. It is a first in terms of being an innovative marketing campaign across digital and offline platforms. The campaign has Virat engaging with the youth, also via a mobile app – both on Android and iOS platform.

We launched Imara in February 2015. Imara is all about reinventing fashion classics and creating a contemporary product narrative for ethnic wear, targeted at the young woman of today. Shraddha Kapoor is the face for Imara, and there is no women’s brand today that offers a refreshing touch on fashion, for the young and the stylish.

The product designs reflect the changing outlook of the Indian woman. India’s progress is not just in the top six cities, it is also waking up the aspirations to ‘dress-up’ in tier II and tier III towns.

What women did once upon a time, is not relevant today and women, today, look at life in a more carefree, liberated and progressive manner and that’s the target audience that Imara reaches out to.

Imara is presently retailed at all Shoppers Stop and available exclusively on India’s largest online fashion channel, Myntra.

More and more celebrities are turning into entrepreneurs today. What’s your take on the Indian celebrity fashion lines?

Celebrity fashion lines is a multi-billion dollar industry globally. For e.g. Jessica Simpson’s eponymous label – owned by a licensee – has grown from a small accessories line to an extensive collection, becoming one of America’s most powerful brands and hit $1bn in sales, across more than 30 product categories, including footwear, clothing, accessories, and even a home goods line. Jay-Z’s Rocawear line averages £700m in annual sales and P.Diddy’s label Sean John, rakes in an extra £75m for the hip hop star.

Celebrities in sports, films and fashion industry are integral part of our sub-culture but under leveraged commercially. USPL is at the core of building this opportunity. We are confident that celebrity fashion lines will create a lot of value for the end user and play an important role in the fashion industry.

Why is the brand focussed on shop-in-shop models and not standalone independent stores?

At this stage of our lifecycle, we want to increase our reach with the right blend of offline and online partners. Shoppers Stop has a very robust network and gives us tremendous flexibility to position our brands adeptly. In the same way, Myntra has a focussed eCommerce team that amplifies our online presence strategy. We are also exploring how best to do a few exclusive stores for the brands as we scale up our overall operations.

What are your future plans with (physical stores and e-tail presence) Imaara, WROGN and Collectabillia?

We plan to enhance the network presence from 30 stores to over 75 stores for Imara and from 38 stores to 70 stores for WROGN alongside a focus on exclusive brand outlets.

For WROGN and Imara, we have partnered with India’s largest online fashion player Myntra. Since Myntra has a very strong reach, we are focussed on building the offline channels and the brands to ensure sales momentum and brand engagement.

For Collectabillia, USPL plans to extend its range of fashion accessories forging alliances with 10 leading iconic and celebrated personalities. Collectabillia has its dedicated eCommerce portal.

Where is USPL planning to utilise the recent second round of funding it has secured?

USPL will deploy the funds raised through the just concluded Series-B funding to expand the distribution network for Wrogn and Imara across the country as also scaling up the branding efforts for the company’s offerings. As I mentioned before, we plan to enhance the network presence for Imara and for WROGN alongside category extensions for both our brands.

We have also introduced Imara Fusion, extending the mother brand, Imara’s core product philosophy of creating new tales of fashion, to develop contemporary designs for work and casual wear and target younger audiences.

For Collectabillia, we plan to extend its range of fashion accessories. As an extension of this initiative, Collectabillia will also seek to identify and engage untapped talent for developing and sourcing designs for its line of fashion accessories.   

Talk to us about the eCommerce strategy and the percentage of revenue generated vis-a-vis the physical stores.

We have our weightage evenly spread for WROGN, with our revenue ratio of offline vs online around 50:50 for WROGN, however, we expect this to get skewed towards offline with our offline expansion as planned. Imara is currently operating at 70:30and 20:80 for Collectabillia in the offline:online channel, respectively.

Future plans?

We are presently focussed on the three offerings and realising its true potential both in India and targeted international markets. Our goal is to build brands that are intrinsic to the lives of our customers and we are working towards weaving them into the cultural fabric.

We are exploring an option to launch another brand alongside an opportunity to add other categories in the existing brands primarily to give a wholesome experience. We are also focussing to launch our exclusive brand outlets for a complete showcase of the respective brands.

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