Guillame Brouwet (GB): India with its growing economy has great opportunity for the eyewear market. Before venturing India, we conducted a research and found that in Europe a store caters to 10000 people whereas, in India it caters to 1.5 lakh people. This implies that India provides a great opportunity for the retail business.
SS: Tell our readers about your product portfolio, store formats, etc. Also what kind of investment have you made in the Indian market and when do you think you will break even?
GB: Vision Express is a European optical chain and has its presence in several countries across the world. In India, Vision Express is a joint venture between Reliance Retail and Pearle Europe, offering international designs and optical skills. We provide the best quality eyewear and trendiest sunglasses to suit Indian requirements. Vision Express provides the latest VX eyewear and high value certified eye care. At this stage it is difficult for me to reveal the investment figures and the timeframe to break even.
SS: What is the strategy behind choosing Reliance as a partner to enter India?
GB: Reliance is one of the best groups in India and has created tremendous opportunities in the Indian market, thus made them an obvious choice at a very early stage. Reliance has helped us a lot in our expansion, established us at the best location and has put a lot of strength in our joint venture.
SS: How do you perceive the Indian customers for your category?
GB: The Indian customers are very interesting and have a lot of awareness regarding what they want. They are conscious about the quality and design. It is very challenging and good for our brand to develop the merchandise according to their needs.
SS: You majorly cater to urban cities, what are your plans about entering tier-II and tier-III cities? What major difference do you see between these two audiences in terms of selling your products?
GB: Mysore and Managalore are next on our list and we have opened a lot of stores in
Punjab. The difference between the two groups is that in tier-I cities, people are more open to trendy frames, and in tier II and tier-III cities they only go for classic and formal makes.
SS: Are you into franchising your outlets or all your outlets are company owned?
GB: We are not into franchising, we have company owned stores. We do not entertain external people; we do our own training and development also.
SS: What are your expansion plans?
GB: We already have 62 stores across India and by December 2010-Jan 2011 we are planning to reach 100 stores. We are also looking at opening 20 more stores in 2011 and we are eyeing around 500 stores by 2014-2015.
SS: What major difference do you see between the Indian retail and the European retail scenario?
GB: The European market has mostly elderly audiences who are receptive to change; on the other hand, India is a very dynamic market with maximum young audiences of mostly 25 years of age. This helps us to experiment with new designs resulting in the creative growth of the business.
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