13 January 2023, Mumbai

Exotic India Art has opened a flagship store in New Delhi. This is the company’s first ever flagship store and it measures 9,000 sqft and houses the business’ full selection of art, home décor, clothing, and saris, among other handicraft items.

The store is designed to celebrate India’s cultural heritage. The store also houses jewellery, beauty products, books, and textiles and sources Fair Trade goods from across India.

Exotic India Art has seen exponential growth in expansion and customer acquisition and will continue to blend online and in-store experiences. The motive is to bring a world-class experience and offer quality products to people who appreciate Indian art and culture. The plan is to open over 100 stores in the future pan-India.

Exotic India focuses on products which are made using a traditional skill or craft. Exotic India Art was launched in 1998. To date, the business has processed over one million orders and its customer base exceeds three lakh people. Products are curated from artisans, designers, and artists who use traditional techniques, skills and hand-based processes. All Indian artisans, designers, and artists that the brand collaborates with are paid upfront, with remuneration above the market rates.

Exotic India ships to some 160 countries across the world.

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13 January 2023, Mumbai

Garima Garg has joined The Label Life as chief executive officer. She comes from Hindustan Unilever, where she was the senior global manager for sales and managed beauty brands like Lakme and Lux.

In her new role, she will be responsible for leading and scaling up The Label Life’s presence in domestic and global markets and focusing on expanding revenue channels and the brand’s reach to consumers who desire contemporary fashion.

She has experience in building global consumer brands in the lifestyle space. The Label Life is foraying into global markets and in the offline space through brand stores and currently retails an array of fashion garments, footwear, accessories, and homeware.

The brand was acquired by Goat Brand Labs in February 2022. Goat Brand Labs founded in May 2021 works collaboratively with brand founders and empowers them with the right resources to help scale their brands. It empowers brands with strong operational capabilities and supports growth by providing data-driven insights, supply chain expertise, financial planning, and deep expertise in brand building, digital marketing, product development, etc.

Goat, backed by marquee investors, has emerged as the leading aggregator in the fashion and lifestyle space. Goat has a portfolio of fast-growing fashion and lifestyle brands.

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 11 January 2023, Mumbai

Soumen Samanta has joined Bliss Club as chief revenue officer.

Prior to joining Bliss Club, Soumen was at Meesho, where he led the retention and engagement charter. Before that, he was at Swiggy’s cloud kitchen business and Myntra’s private brands portfolio. He has also had stints in retail operations and strategy for Landmark and Aditya Birla.

In his new role at Bliss Club, he will be a key leader to spearhead the company’s journey to build a Rs 1000 crore business over the next two or three years, with both online and offline playing a key role, while also building one of the most loved community-based movewear brands for women in India.

Bliss Club plans to enter new markets, categories and channels with tech and a user-first lens. Bliss Club, a women’s activewear brand, founded in 2020, has a vision to enable women to discover the joy of movement and build beautiful and functional products.

What began as a personal attempt at making a better pair of workout clothes has now become a revolution to get women across the country to go out, workout and move around more comfortably and freely.

In a very quick span of time, Bliss Club has built a strong community with the vision of being a catalyst in the active lifestyle revolution in India.

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13 January 2023, Mumbai

Ace Turtle has appointed Amit Kriplani as Chief Technology Officer and Punit Aggarwal as Chief Financial Officer.

With an experience of one-and-a-half decades in the technology industry, Amit Kriplani has held various leadership positions in top technology companies such as Amazon and Flipkart. He has expertise in leading large teams and delivering multi-million-dollar software and web projects.

In his new role, he will be responsible for heading the engineering function and building innovative technology solutions to scale the businesses of Ace Turtle’s brands’ portfolio.

With over 17 years of experience in finance and accounting, Punit Aggarwal is a chartered accountant and has worked at Ola, Cisco, Adobe, GE and Vodafone. Prior to joining Ace Turtle, he was at Flipkart. At Ace Turtle, Punit will head the finance function and oversee all financial, regulatory and investor relations activities.

Ace Turtle, based in Bangalore, a technology-driven retail company, has transitioned from a retail SaaS company. It has realigned its business to focus on the licensed brands vertical and scale them across the country. It will add more international fashion and lifestyle brands to its portfolio soon. Among the brands in its portfolio are Lee, Wrangler, ToysRUs and BabiesRUs.

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 12 January 2023, Mumbai

Kiara Advani is the new brand ambassador for Mohey.

Mohey is an ethnic fashion and bridal wear brand launched in 2015 and has over 50 stores across the country along with a strong online presence.

This has lehengas, saris, gowns, blouses, sari gowns and suits, bags, clutches, dupattas, ponchos and jewellery like rings, ear rings, neck pieces, mangtika and belly belts. Every Mohey garment is handpicked for its concept, attention to detail, fabric, hue, cut, embellishment and finishing.

This brand is from Vedant Fashions. Vedant Fashions plans to double retail floor space to two million square feet in the next few years. The company owns brands like Manyavar, Mohey and Mebaz. Most of the company’s exclusive brand outlets are owned and operated by franchisees.

The company has over 300 franchisees and a total of 537 exclusive outlets (including 55 shop-in-shops and 12 international stores) spread over an aggregate retail floor space of approximately 1.1 million square feet in 207 cities and towns in India and eight cities internationally.

About 90.14 per cent sales were generated by franchisee-owned exclusive outlets in the financial year 2021. Moreover, 60 per cent of Vedant’s retail area is in Tier II and III cities while the balance is spread over Tier I cities.

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 09 January 2023, Mumbai

Stanton Ambrose has been appointed head of marketing and PR at Celio.

A marketing professional, Stanton has over eleven years of experience in brand management, marketing strategy, customer experience, and digital marketing in the retail industry.

He has an impressive background and a stellar work record in the apparel industry. He has a proven track record for delivering innovation and growth to the brands he leads. Stanton has held key marketing roles across reputable companies such as Reliance Brands, Bestseller, and Future Group.

Having previously worked on both the digital and traditional ecosystems of the apparel world, Stanton comes with robust learnings and skills that will be pertinent to strengthening the consumer connection for Celio.

At Celio, he will spearhead the men’s fashion label’s marketing department and overlook key function areas namely marketing and public relations across platforms. He will join the leadership team and lead brand strategy and integrated marketing as the brand scales rapidly and builds a stronger consumer franchise in India.

He is expected to drive the agenda of strengthening the brand narrative and driving salience to the next level and building a community of consumers who resonate with the brand’s ethos.

Celio is a French menswear brand and has a strong presence in India.

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13 January 2023, Mumbai

Goat Brand Labs has acquired Chumbak. Chumbak is an iconic home and lifestyle brand, with unique Indian aesthetics and a wide base of loyal consumers. The brand has strong sales on both online and offline channels.

Goat Brand Labs plans to grow Chumbak to Rs 500 crores by 2025, accelerate its growth as a powerful and global brand in the home and gifting space, leveraging Goat’s deep capabilities in brand building, digital marketing, online and offline growth, and expansion into international markets.

Goat Brand Labs was founded in May 2021. Goat works collaboratively with brand founders and empowers them with the right resources to help scale their brands. It empowers brands with strong operational capabilities and supports growth by providing data-driven insights, supply chain expertise, financial planning, and deep expertise in brand building, digital marketing, product development, etc.

Goat, backed by marquee investors, has emerged as the leading aggregator in the fashion and lifestyle space. Goat has a portfolio of fast-growing fashion and lifestyle brands. The vision is to make Indian D2C brands world famous.Last year Goat Brand Labs acquired multiple well-known D2C brands including The Label Life, India’s top celebrity-styled brand, and trueBrowns, a premium ethnic wear brand, both of which have grown multifold since their partnership with Goat.

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 11 January 2023, Mumbai

Reid & Taylor celebrates 25 years in India. The brand plans to reach more takers by augmenting the quality further, with innovative brands and designs in 2023.

Reid & Taylor was launched in India with a manufacturing unit setup in Mysore in 1998. The brand offers shirts, pants, suitings and ready garments. This premium suiting and shirting brand has built a strong presence in India with its premium experience and high-value endorsements by ace celebrities. With its rapid growth in the initial years and increasing demands from consumers, the company faced a lot of challenges in the last decade with faulty supply chain management and inefficient management of distribution channels, which halted the growth of the brand.

It went through a process of restructuring, and eventually it was taken over by the Finquest Group in 2020. Within a short period, Reid & Taylor has bounced back and is rapidly growing. With its suiting factory running successfully in Mysore, Reid & Taylor has expanded its product basket by acquiring a premium 100 per cent cotton shirting unit at Bharuch with an investment of more than Rs300 crores. This premium shirting unit is a one-of-a-kind manufacturing unit with an annual capacity of more than 18 million meters and is spread over 35 acres of land.

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09 January 2023, Mumbai

Aditya Birla Fashion and Retail plans to raise Rs 500 crores through issuance of bonds on private placement basis.

The company proposed to raise funds by issuing 5,000 listed, unsecured, rated, redeemable non-convertible debentures of a face value of Rs 10 lakh each, issued at par aggregating to Rs 500 crores on private placement basis, on or after January 13, 2023. This is within the limits approved by the board and shareholders of the company.

Aditya Birla Fashion and Retail, part of the Aditya Birla Group, is India’s largest multi-brand retailer of international global brands such as Ralph Lauren, Hackett, Ted Baker, Fred Perry, Forever 21, American Eagle and Reebok.The company’s portfolio also includes fashion brands -- Louis Philippe, Van Heusen, Allen Solly and Peter England -- and fashion retailer Pantaloons.

Aditya Birla’s strategy is to build a portfolio of new-age, digital brands across categories in fashion, beauty and lifestyle segments. Aditya Birla plans to enable multiple founders to operate within a synergistic platform that will have shared capabilities and make eight to ten investments in early-stage digital first brands by the end of this financial year with the initial focus being on broad categories of fashion.

Traditional companies have the wherewithal to acquire new D2C brands to compensate for their late entry in the online space, a channel that now accounts for 30 per cent to 50 per cent for several brands.

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13 January 2023, Mumbai

Asics sees huge possibilities in the Indian market. The Japanese sportswear brand is looking to focus on promoting the running culture in India.

At present, Asics is doing some manufacturing of apparel and footwear in India, and in terms of business, 25 per cent of its revenues are coming from products produced in India, with both footwear and apparels combined. Currently, the company’s footwear manufacturing facility is located in Dehradun and the apparel is produced in a factory close to Delhi.

Asics operates with 81 company-owned stores spread pan-India, with majority of them in the north, south and western parts of the country and some in the east. It is also present across multi-brand stores with 700 point of sales. The company has a significant digital presence as well, with more than 40 per cent of the business coming digitally this year, as the products are getting sold in Tier II, III and IV towns of India as well.

The company is looking to add about 20 more stores this year. Asics has plans to expand apparel production in India and would also look at making it an export hub for Asics subsidiaries, going forward.Additionally, the company is also looking at digitalisation of its retail stores to increase consumer engagement.

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11 January 2023, Mumbai

Wildcraft has chosen WFX Fashion PLM to digitalise its operations. This is expected to improve Wildcraft’s operational efficiency and help the company grow.

Wildcraft based in India is an outdoor brand. WFX, World Fashion Exchange, is a leading provider of cloud-based enterprise software solutions for the fashion industry. PLM is a modern cloud-based system that will enable Wildcraft to streamline its processes, manage data from multiple sources and increase visibility into the production process.

Rapid expansion made it clear that Wildcraft needed a more efficient way to manage its operations than relying on paper records and spreadsheets maintained by individual employees. Till now, Wildcraft had been using a variety of different systems to keep track of production and workflow. It didn’t have a centralised system in place for managing information about production history and status. Additionally, there was no way to track real-time progress and productivity of each employee on their particular projects because there wasn’t any data available about what had already been completed or what remained to be done. This led to a fragmented view of the business and made coordination difficult.

After researching several options, Wildcraft chose WFX PLM because it met all of Wildcraft’s requirements: an easy-to-use interface that allows employees from different departments to centrally input information, robust inventory management features and collaboration capabilities so that Wildcraft can share data with its supply chain partners.

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09 January 2023, Mumbai

Titan saw 12 per cent growth in combined sales in the standalone business during the quarter ended December 2022.

This was backed by healthy consumer demand during the festive season. The positive consumer sentiment helped all categories clock healthy double-digit growth, despite a high base in the same period of last year. The retail presence stands at 2,362 stores at the end of the quarter.

In the mainstay jewellery segment, sales grew 11 per cent and watches and wearables increased 14 per cent. In the eyecare business, the revenue rose ten percent. Sales from the studded category moderately outpaced gold jewellery segment growth compared to the same period last year.Wedding sales grew in line with the division’s overall sales.

In the quarter, the company added eight new stores in Tanishq and 14 in Mia by Tanishq. Strong traction in the wearables space drove the double-digit growth in the segment. A slew of exciting product launches in the fiscal year leading to the festive season contributed well to more than tripling sales from the wearables sub-segment in the quarter, compared to the same period last year.

During the quarter, Titan added 24 stores of Titan World--- 17 of Helios and seven of Fastrack.

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