Danish sports lifestyle brand Hummel enters Indian retail market

Hummel International, the Danish sports lifestyle brand, has opened five stores in Bengaluru, Pune, Chennai, Surat and Amritsar, entering into the Indian retail market. The brand will be investing $5.5 million in its first year of operations in the country.

Hummel aims to open 10 more stores in India in the current fiscal year. It will take on other popular sports lifestyle brands such as Nike, Adidas, Reebok, Puma and Nautica, to name a few.

The brand offers 6000 SKUs (stock keeping units) for men, women and kids globally. But in India, it will start with 850 SKUs for men and women only.

Soumava Naskar, Managing Director, Hummel India Private Limited, said, “Hummel merchandise was available on Jabong and Myntra in 2016 but, we stopped selling directly to both the platforms in 2017 because we had no pricing control. Three months ago, we listed our merchandise on Amazon and Flipkart via our partner ND Commerce, which manages our online stores and handles pricing control too. This means, if customers receive discounts on our end-of-season products on Amazon or Flipkart, they will receive the same discounts in our physical stores as well. This is our first promise to Indian customers.”

Owned by the Danish Thornico Group, Hummel is one of the oldest, team sports brand in the business and launched football cleats way back in the 1920s.

“While Hummel is known as a team sports brand in Europe, in India, it is positioned as a sports lifestyle brand, as millennials in India like to make style statements wearing sports lifestyle brands,” Naskar stated.

Currently, Hummel is present in more than 35 countries, has over 250 mono-brand stores and expects to end this calendar year with $1.5 billion in turnover.