"We Plan To Take The Store Count Till 120 By End of 2021": Suresh Agrawal

 Tell us about the brand Usupso, when did the brand foray Indian market and journey so far?
USUPSO and its product line was conceptualized in Tokyo with the sole objective of providing it’s consumers a diverse range of, nature inspired, aesthetically young, utility and high quality oriented products of everyday utility at an exciting and affordable price bracket. At USUPSO, the objective was to give this concept a global outreach with 1700 + stores across the globe and growing, is a clear indicator of our commitment to pursue and achieve our global objective.
USUPSO made its debut in the Indian sub-continent in January, 2018with individual retail stores in 7 locations spread across the southern, western and eastern parts of India to understand the potential of this form of retail. The brand formally commenced operations and officially launched through its Master Franchise for India Territory (USUPSO RETAIL INDIA PVT. LTD.) in January, 2019 and since then we have now grown into a robust network of 25 stores. At USUPSO we sell experiences to our strategic partners and consumers and these experiences strengthen our trust and help us build upon a strong relationship with our investors and end consumers.
What is your assessment about fashion and lifestyle market in India? According to you, what are the factors propelling growth in this segment?

GenX believes in the oomph factor and we understand their requirements. At USUPSO, our product development team works seamlessly to integrate the consumer’s aspirations through detailed research to build in our product suite. The ability to synergize with consumerism trends is what drives us better and helps us cater better to their needs. Consumers globally are continuously seeking for newer, smarter, visually appealing, price sensitive lifestyle utility designer products and at USUPSO our endeavor is to be an enabler to this aspect of consumerism, which we feel, is the real growth enabler. 

 Kindly shed light on your current distribution in the online as well as offline space. Going forward what are the plans to scale up the distribution. Do you plan to explore franchise model as far as distribution expansion is concerned?

Our distribution model is based upon a robust network of franchises. Enabling the online distribution model will for sure dilute the probability of my franchises; hence we do not wish to venture that model as of now. Our plan for 2019-20 is to grow organically and achieve an outreach of 30-50 stores across India and we wish to achieve the 120 stores milestone by end of 2021.

Tell us about your retailing categories and average price point. Going forward, what are the plans to expand the category range?

The beauty of this form of retail is a large variety of utility, daily use lifestyle products of premium quality at affordable prices. Our categories range from cosmetics/footwear/headwear/toys/digital/stationeries/bags/menbags/purses/sling bags/women bags/eye wear/travel accessories/kitchen ware/bathing accessories /home decor items and many more with the essence of adding new categories and products at regular intervals, to keep the excitement alive amongst our consumers.

70% of our products fall within the price range of Rs.48 to Rs. 499

Who do you see as your competition?

In the past 2 years, Indian consumers have seen an influx and rise in brands having similar concept and appeal in the Indian Sub-Continent. We are not here to compete but sustain the concept, which can only be attained by putting in place a robust operations and logistics infrastructure. Our aim is to offer realistic and competitive investment ticket size to our prospective Franchise investors along with an exciting return on investment. The best part is we are 30% cheaper (than other similar brands) in the overall initial investment required and provide the maximum profit margin to our investors. We compete with quality and affordability.

Tell us about your Omni channel strategy?

We are very clear and have taken a conscious decision to keep our distribution model transparent, lean and simple. We currently work on the outlined distribution models:
A.    Company Owned and Company Operated (COCO)
B.    Franchise Owned and Franchise Operated (FOFO)

At last, kindly highlight your growth plans?
We plan to grow organically and have an outreach of 30-50 stores in 2019 -20 across India and wish to take this up to 120 stores by the end of 2021.
 

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