Indian Retail Industry on Footwear

The Indian retail industry is headed for exceptional growth in the coming years. Not only is the market size growing, but it is also getting more organized. So the retail sector is poised for a double push.  Also, the Indian retail industry has started following global trends at a faster rate. A few years back a world wide trend used to take a couple of years to come to India, but now that has reduced to around 6 months and in certain cases the transfer is instant. The uniqueness of this market is that even though it follows global trends, these trends have to be customized according to the Indian market.


Alberto Torresi, since its inception as a brand, has focused on youth and with this segment getting stronger in terms of both willingness and ability to buy, the brand focus has only grown stronger. The one thing that the customer is looking for is newness and he is willing to try out all the new stuff offered in the market.

Additionally, due to the focus on the youth the brand has kept up with various upcoming nd latest trends, in terms of the design, feel, colors, concepts, etc. We have kept a close eye on the trends and have adapted the product offering accordingly while keeping it in line with the brand philosophy of offering high fashion comfortable shoes.
 
Ecommerce

Ecommerce for our brand has seen exceptional growth in the footwear category and contrary to popular belief in the case of footwear, online retail provides convenience which is what the shoppers are looking for. Once the shopper gets used to the idea of using e commerce, they are comfortable using is as a preferred option of shopping.

Shopper Study

Market research is a continuous process for us. We started studying the market a year before entering India and have since been continuing to do so. As mentioned earlier, most modern customers have started adapting to the change at a very fast pace and are constantly look for newness. Additionally, a customer now buys different shoes for different purposes, so the earlier average of 1.57 pairs per year  for a typical Indian male is going to grow.
 
Challenges

Well, we were pure manufacturers with a very limited exposure to the Indian market. So we had to learn and adapt to the tastes of the Indian customer. We also realized that running a brand is a very different ball game compared to manufacturing. We added a lot of people to the workforce on the retail front and adjusted our systems to it. We also developed an ERP for it.

We did face a lot of difficulties, but the market and our partners supported us well and we developed a fantastic team and are now equipped to tackle the huge growth which we are expecting.

Investment

This year we aim to invest around Rs 10 cr in R&D, marketing and back end.

Expansion

We are aiming to increase our point of sales through out the country. We had around 70 points of sales in October 2010 and we have since swelled up to around 600 in December 2013. We just completed an expansion of the back end infrastructure in October 2013 thereby tripling our capacity. We expect to take our tally of total stores to around 1000 by March'15.
The South and North have been strong markets for us in the country so we would be focusing on them more. But the East and West have also just started to grow and we expect them to enter our strong market category soon.