Soch goes international, opens first store in Canada – ET Retail

Homegrown ethnic wear brand Soch has made its offline foray into international waters by opening its first offline store in Brampton, Canada. The brand’s expansion into Canada reflects its vision of reaching the global Indian diaspora, Vinay Chatlani, CEO & co-founder of Soch told ETRetail.

The omnichannel brand has also launched an exclusive website for Canada showcasing its collection.

“Our strategy is to extend our presence into overseas markets with significant Indian-origin populations, and Canada aligns perfectly with that vision. We took the franchising route to foray into the international markets,” he said.

By this fiscal end, the brand plans to open 2 more stores in Malaysia and Singapore or the USA.

“During the first phase of expansion, we plan to venture into other countries like the USA, Malaysia, Singapore, Indonesia, Mauritius, the Middle East, and the UK and aim to open 4-5 stores in the international markets,” he asserted.

“Last fiscal, we only had an online presence in the international markets and it contributed 2 per cent of the overall revenue. So this fiscal, there will be a larger push on online international sales. We expect double that. And from stores, we are eyeing Rs 10-15 crore revenue by this fiscal end. This we plan to increase to Rs 40-50 crore by next fiscal year,” he further added.

In India, Soch has grown to over 175 stores across 68 cities. This fiscal, it is planning to open 40 more stores, and half of these stores will be company-owned and company-operated and the remaining half will be run by franchise partners.

‘We aim our stores to hit the break-even point or be profitable within the first 6 months of operations,” he said.

“Apart from this, we have a presence in 45 shop-in-shops. We are in talks with two national chains and hope to roll out with them soon,” he further added.

Starting from August, the brand aims to have a presence in 25 MBOs by this fiscal-end.

This fiscal, the brand is planning to invest Rs 20-25 crore to aid the expansion plans.

“Apart from this, we are also planning to expand our manufacturing capacity from 10,000 products per month to 40,000 products per month,” he said.

Apart from its own manufacturing unit, the brand is working with four additional manufacturing units and plans to expand it by another six manufacturing units to increase its production capacity.

The brand, which closed the last fiscal at Rs 435 crore, is planning to clock Rs 515 crore this fiscal.

“The last financial year, we concentrated a little more on consolidation and working on cost efficiencies. We have also reduced the selling prices of certain products. As a result, our margin as a percentage may have come down, but the absolute value has gone up,” he concluded.

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