"We plan to open about 18 -20 own stores over next two years time": Vimal Kumar Kamnani

VOI Jeans entered the Indian market in 2011. The company has recently announced its joint venture with its UK Counterpart. As a result, they would be looking at some massive expansion opportunities adding their existing 60+ outlets across India. In an exclusive conversation with Vimal Kumar Kamnani, CEO, VOI Jeans India sheds light on the growth strategies further. 


Tell us more about the UK joint venture with VOI Jeans India?
The joint venture consists of predominantly funding along with production support in terms of increasing the product categories like winter wear, footwear and accessories as well as expansion support.
How do you analyse the growth potential of the denim market of India? What is the rationale behind foraying into the overly crowded fashion market in India?
 
Denim and casual wear is among the high revenue categories in India’s growing domestic apparel market.

The market size of the Indian denim segment was estimated at Rs. 23,076 crores in 2017 and is projected to reach Rs. 41,947 crores by 2022 and Rs. 76,258 crores by 2027 with men’s denim accounting for the largest share, expected to grow at a high CAGR of 12.7% over the next decade. We accept the casual wear segment and the denim wear segment is no doubt crowded. But the fashion denim segment is not crowded. Our target is to bring in European high fashion to our customers at prices that are easy on Indian pockets.
 
Tell us about the international presence of VOI Jeans. What kind of distribution is planned for the Indian market including online and offline space? Do you have any plans to expand the brand via the franchise model?
 
VOI Jeans has a global presence with outlets in UK, Germany, Russia, Holland and Austria with retail sales of 2 billion USD. We function through exclusive stores, large-format and multi-brand outlets. We have 20 exclusive outlets currently and we are planning to open 20 more stores in the next 2 years. We are present online through major e-commerce channels likeAjio, Myntra and Amazon. Yes, we are keen to expand our business of exclusive stores mainly through the franchise model in the next couple of years.
 
Who do you see as your competition within the same space?
 
As mentioned earlier, we are into European high fashion at affordable prices and we don’t see any competition in that space.
 
According to you, what are the major challenges as far as denim retailing is concerned?
 

We see a big challenge in  denim retail stores in metro cities where the cost of rent and operations is very high. But, we see a very good potential in tier 2 and tier 3 towns where there is a demand for high fashion at affordable prices with cost-effective rents, which in turn leads to viability of the stores.

Kindly shed light on your design and sourcing team.
 
We have a team of designers who are from prestigious institutes across the country. An exclusive team of designers work on store designs, product designs and VM designs. We have a set of talented people in our sourcing team who are backed with a solid experience in exports. We also have tie-ups with export houses to source our requirements.
 
Tell us about your growth plans.
 
We are present in 4 channels: EBO, LFO,multi-brand outlets and e-commerce, andwe are planning to grow through all these channels. VOI Jeans India has 20 Exclusive Brand Outlets (EBOs). We plan to open about 18 -20 own stores over next two years’.
Market Presence
We are present in 90% of the central stores; hence we would continue partnering with them as they expand their market.We are in talks with Shoppers Stop for a potential association.We have 116 shop-in-shop in total currently. We will look to increase it up to 260 in Tier 2 & 3 cities.


 

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