Reliance Footprint eyes Rs 2000 cr in 5 years

Reliance Footprint, Reliance Retail’s multi-brand footwear store chain, on Monday said the company was looking at a seven to eight percent share of India’s projected 25,000 crore footwear market in five years.

The company on Monday opened its first East India store ? a 6,000 sq ft property on the outskirts of Kolkata. It currently runs 33 stores across India and wants to increase it to 45, including five for the East, by the end of the current fiscal.

“The footwear market in India is currently about Rs 15,000 crores. In five years, we estimate it to be about Rs 25,000 crores and have a seven to eight percent share by then,” Reliance Footprint chief executive Gopalakrishnan Sankar said.

For expansion, opening up stores and increasing presence is Reliance’s strategy and it may also consider a franchisee model later on.

The company, which has already achieved a break-even and eyes the 2,000 crore topline in four to five years, opened its first store in Bangalore in Nov. 2007.

“We would like to open a hundred stores every year. As a thumb rule, the investment for each one is about Rs 2 crores,” Sankar said, indicating at an annual investment of around Rs 200 crores.

Reliance aims to make the store chain into the largest multi-brand footwear destination in the country, offering products, including shoes, handbags accessories and luggage, at different price points.

So apart from a plethora of high end brands, each store also deals in about eight of Reliance’s own brands which offer footwear in the same class at “about 30 percent cheaper”, said Shankar.

“The pricing range in the store goes from below Rs 300 to Rs 7,500,” he said.

The company is also looking at mono-brand outlets to market sports shoes from Japanese brand Asics as an exclusive arrangement in the coming months.