Of this, it will open 70 stores (spread over 8,000-10,000 sq ft each) in tier-II towns, 35 in tier-I cities and 25 to 30 smaller stores (6,000-8,000 sq ft) in tier-III cities. At present, Globus has 19 stores.
It is also planning to launch an e-commerce portal from October to promote its brand. "Online model is comfortable to our audience. We want to leverage on our brick-and-mortar model on the e-commerce platform,'' said Globus CEO Vinay Nadkarni.
Ludhiana, Vashi (near Mumbai), Nagpur, Mumbai, Nasik, Rajkot, Jodhpur, Faridabad, Jaipur, Surat among others will see new Globus stores in 2008. It will have a total store area of 12 lakh sq ft by 2010-11 from 2.10 lakh sq ft area now.
On the slower roll out of stores previously, Nadkarni said, "We have to build everything from the scratch from sourcing to design studios. Since we have build our back-end completely now, we can focus on front-end expansion.''
On the increased focus on tier-II cities, he said, "There is a very good potential in tier-II cities with increased buying power and increased desire for fashion.
"These factors coupled with lower real estate costs made us take the first mover advantage in cities such as Ranchi, Dehradun, Raipur and so on, which do not have many retail destinations.''
Globus has signed bollywood actress Kareena Kapoor as its new brand ambassador. Another cinestar Soha Ali Khan endorsed the brand for a while.
"Since we are focusing more on youth and style, we selected Kareena who has a sense of style, charisma, attitude and a pan-India popularity," he said.
