Christian Dior, the luxury fashion house, is to invest directly into India by taking control of its outlets, currently franchised, through a subsidiary company. Indian policy allows foreign companies to own up to 51% of a retail venture as long as it sells only a single brand. The move will allow Dior to invest in personnel, training and retail real estate. The company said it will invest Rs200m (£2.5m) over the next five years on operations and will sell accessories, clothing, shoes, bags and perfumes under the brand. It marks one of few moves by big name luxury brands into Indian retail to date. “At the real top-end luxury products, there's not much action yet,” Soumya Palchoudhuri, retail analyst at Ernst & Young, told The Retail Bulletin. “Gas, VF and Diesel have foreign direct investment approval, but they're really only mid-tier names.”Luxury boutiques that are present, including Louis Vuitton, Chanel and Jimmy Choo, are distributed mainly in five-star hotels. Plans for huge shopping malls in India are expected to change this however. Real estate developers are planning to build 143m sq ft of retail space in shopping malls over the next five years. The country's biggest mall, to be completed by 2010 in Bangalore, will devote its entire 695,000sq ft of retail space to luxury names.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
No comments:
Post a Comment