What made VOI enter the Indian market? And, why Bangalore, instead of say Delhi or Mumbai, the usual destinations for brands in this category?

The main idea behind VOI entering the Indian market was that we saw a huge gap in the fashion jeans wear market in India. In spite of the gap in the stylized garments and fashion washes segment, there has been no one taking that space, so we thought of filling the gap. I believe we are a fashion jeans wear brand with the right pricing, which gives us huge scope in this market to grow and expand. That is the reason why we chose to come down to India.

We chose Bangalore, because our Indian partners, Scott Garments, are based in the city. It makes it operationally convenient for us to be in the place where we have our ware house and manufacturing facility.

What are the criteria for choosing a particular site or a format?

I would say the criteria for us is basically the size of the store. There are three sizes that we go for: one is the flagship store format which is of around minimum 3000 square feet. This is followed by our minimum low-end format which ranges starts from 600 sq.ft. to 1000 sq.ft. While location wise, right now we are not going much into high streets. Rather, we are opting for mall properties where there are a lot of walk-ins already present. So we don't need to put in much effort into driving walk-ins into our stores.
       
What is the brand and business objective for this new store design concept?

We did a lot of research to get the look and feel of what a jeans wear brand should be and as the concept of VOI says engineered for you, it reflects a lot of industrial constructed look. So, in order to create a good ambience for people who walk in we started forming entire areas where we maintained a lot of individual elements, which also reflects our core philosophy. You can see a lot of wood and metal installations in our store reflecting a blend of industrial element and modern styling.
 
What was the creative interpretation behind the store design?

Our team believes in the modern design aspect and we follow people like Le-Corbusier and Marc Newson. These are our benchmarks; we drive our inspirations from them. All of them had a single common element that created simplistic design and style, but with a powerful impact. So, taking motivation from them we tried to create a signature style of our own in which I think we have achieved quite a lot in the store. The store reflects simplicity which also makes a very powerful statement.
 
How does the brand connect and be in sync with its target audience?

There are a lot of marketing activities we do to reach our target audience, but we believe that marketing doesn't have to necessarily involve a TVC or something on which we have to spend a huge amount of money. Our marketing plan is based on a few things; we have a target age group that we cater to. If for example, this group falls under the 18 to 30 years category , we start brainstorming accordingly  and look at different aspects like where they hang out, what kind of clothes they prefer, the kind of music they listen to etc. So, this way we actually started classifying our music which further helped us in doing activations like VOI Nights. We have also sponsored rallies in Abu Dhabi, and we go to college fests, use the social media, host contests on Facebook and additionally, we also do a lot of activations in the malls.

How does the brand's retail identity differ in terms of the Indian stores and the ones based in UK?

If you ask me, yes there is a lot of difference in terms of the store because stores in UK were done a few years back and as the retail scenario is very dynamic and keeps evolving, the format is not something which can be replicated here. We just wanted an eye catchy format which drives people in.

So, now our India format is getting rolled back into UK and Amsterdam for the upcoming stores. We have just started working on this store format in Amsterdam. It's a franchise store of VOI and we are very excited about taking this format to a global stage.      
 
How do you budget for the various aspects of the store design and how do they relate sales and conversion to the store design?

Today, if we start relating a store cost to the conversion, it is very difficult because today most of the retail companies in India have a fixed budget within which we need to execute the store. But definitely one aspect that helps us a lot is the square feet that we choose. We spend a good amount of money on the store, but if we reduce the amount of space which we are doing, it helps quite a lot for sure because we turn around the PDS much more in a smaller store when compared to a bigger store.

What do you think are the advantages and challenges in the Indian retail scenario?

There are more of disadvantages than advantages in the Indian market especially if a European brand is entering the market. Europeans work with a very set formula of wholesale, they don't have stock correction, they don't have to take any goods back but when we go to the wholesale markets over here, there are a lot of drawbacks. First, you have to keep your stock and then have to manage your stock and finally have to pay them hefty margins. So, it's an outright purchase here, but then there is nothing called an outright purchase, everything is on sale and return.  
Of course, there are also advantages. The scope for point of sale is growing and visually there is a lot of attention that is towards the store. So, definitely from the retail perspective, the market potential is very huge here, Indians have become fashion savvy, they know the brands and the market is also growing.      
  
How do you tackle competition?  

We feel that the regular jeans wear brands that are already present in the market are not a competition for us because we have captured a very different segment in this market. We are a structured, constructed, fashion jeans wear brand, unlike the other brands in this segment, and if we consider anybody our competitor then it would be the global jeans wear brand, G-Star.     
 
Could you share with us the retail expansion strategies for VOI Jeans?

By this year end, we are planning to launch 10 stores of our own in cities like Pune, Cochin and Amritsar while Hyderabad will see our flagship store, sprawling across 3,800 sq.ft. Also by next year, you will be seeing 30 points of retail EBOs. We are also growing in terms of large format stores. We are not there at lifestyle yet, so definitely we are putting in a lot of effort to get into lifestyle segment as well and are looking at the distribution part.  

What kind of investments are you looking at, for this expansion?

The investment in terms of turnover that we are looking at by next year is Rs 70 to 80 crore from this business. By the end of this year I think we will be closing at Rs 30 to 35 crore of turnover.   
 
With this expansion, what kind of growth are you expecting?

If you look at it, we are growing from Rs 30 crore to Rs 70 crore, so that's around 50 per cent growth, which is quite optimistic and big.