Premium lifestyle products brand Swiss Military plans to open 171 stores in India by the end of next year, of which 11 will be company owned and 160 under the franchise model.
“We plan to open 171 stores across the country by 2016 end. Of those, 11 will be company owned while 160 would be franchise stores,” company’s managing director Anuj Sawhney said. The company-owned stores will be in Mumbai, Delhi, Bengaluru, Pune, Kolkata, Chandigarh, Chennai, Ahmedabad and Hyderabad.
“The franchise stores will be in tier I and tier II cities across the country. Apart from these, we will also be adding over 4,000 multi-brand outlets during the period,” Sawhney said. The investment on the expansion would be around Rs 200 crore, he said.
Replying to a question, Sawhney said: “As a company we are debt free and the expansion will be done through internal accruals, from our global resources and some of it will also come from the franchisees.”The franchise stores will be self-financed and for multi brand outlets also there is no investment done by the company, he added.
Sawhney said, “In India, we currently sell 300 products under 5 product lines — baggage, leather, electronics, pens and accessories and will be launching 60 products every month.”
The company currently has 600 stores worldwide, out of which 11 are company owned full stores with most of them being in Switzerland, France and Germany.
