Lalit Agarwal, CMD, V-Mart said, “The brand is a value retailer and 85 per cent of its sales come from products which are below Rs 1,000, where there was no additional GST impact. For the last three quarters post demonetisation we have seen customers are trusting us more and taking the benefit of the organised scale and the large scale that we are trying to get into. So we have been consistently focussing on our key deliverables, Agarwal said.
“We are trying to internally gear up for the growth and this is what we were anticipating the customer is now coming up and rewarding us. So I think overall we should see this growth to continue not as good as this but yes there should always be growth,” Agarwal said.
As I look at your numbers and I see that it is actually apparel which contributes the largest share of the pie and that is a sizable almost 94 to 95% odd, your grocery segment is only about 6% or so do you not think that maybe you need to change a little bit more of your mixed because I mean apparel is an extremely competitive segment so that is do not you think this is a little bit of a risky trajectory that you are headed in?
The brand is liked by the customers in this particular category. If the company has stopped opening stores and continuing with 36 stores which for pure fashion stores and “our focus is very clear that we need to provide customer only those fashion needs because that is what we are good at,” he said. The brand has a huge vendor base which are very much aligned with what the fashion is and we have a team of merchandisers which are really equipped to understand fashion, Agarwal felt.
About setting up new shops, Agarwal said the company has already opened up two stores post June taking the toll to 151 and there is a plan to open 25 more this year, he added.
– Apparel and Textile News, Apparel Talk, Indian Apparel
