Cutting edge
The company's sales in the last one month increased 10%, thanks to the festive season Wills Lifestyle's expects to see 15% growth in October-December this year

The company has been growing at 25% per annum over the last few years.

Madhumita Mookerji. Kolkata

Wills Lifestyle, the lifestyle retailing arm from ITC, is tweaking its brand positioning from premium to high premium category.
The company will adopt a two-pronged strategy for its new positioning. Firstly, the 'boutique store' concept, experimented at the ITC Maurya in Delhi, will now be taken national. Plans are afoot to roll out 10 boutique stores across the country in 1-2 years --mainly in ITC's Luxury Collections hotels. However, these could also come up in Welcom Hotels or other Sheraton branded properties.

These stores, spread over 1,000 sq ft, will have service, products, price tags and display qualities that will be notches higher than in the past.
"There is a perfect synergy between the hotel brands and the lifestyle retail brand," Atul Chand, divisional chief executive, Wills Lifestyle, told DNA Money.
While the hotel will keep the brand's catalogues in the rooms and help train the staff and offer locations for shooting its plush catalogues (the last one was shot at the Kayakalp spa at the ITC Mughal, Agra), the hotel, in turn, will be able to reap the benefits of the Wills Lifestyle branding and earn revenue from rentals.

Two such stores will open within a month at the ITC Gardenia, Bengaluru and ITC Mughal, Agra.

The second strategy for the lifestyle retail brand will be to put a thrust on women's wear, which will facilitate its increased associations with fashion weeks and designers.

Consequently, associations with fashion weeks will be enhanced and tie-ups with fashion designers will increase. For the current season, Wills Lifestyle has tied up with Satya Paul where the brand is fusing the Indian colour sensibility with western silhouettes. The company claims it is the largest women's wear brand in the country.

The fairer sex's contribution to sales has more than doubled from 15% when the brand was launched to 35% currently. However, in India, addressing women's wear is far more challenging and penetration is low since traditional clothes occupy substantial wardrobe space.

Moreover, colours, fabrics, stitches etc are all very different from that of menswear. "Women's wear and menswear, for us, are two verticals where the sourcing and marketing are done separately," said Chand.

After experiencing flat sales during October-March last fiscal, Will's Lifestyle has experienced single digit growth in the first six months of the current fiscal. Things look encouraging with sales in the last one month spurting 10%, thanks to the festive season. The company expects to see 15% growth in October-December this year and Chand feels the women's wear category will see a growth of 20% in this period.

Wills Lifestyle's CAGR has been 25% over the last few years.