Latest News India,Franchise News India, NEW DELHI,The Indian unit of French clothing firm Lacoste hopes as much as 10% of its sales to come through ecommerce channels, including its own recently launched portal, in the next 18-24 months.

The company, which currently doesn’t sell its products on any third-party online platforms in India, is also in talks with ecommerce firms as part of its strategy to tap the online opportunity, Lacoste India Chief Executive Rajesh Jain said.

It is in advanced talks with at least two major e-tailers to open exclusive Lacoste stores on their platforms. Jain declined to name these companies, citing confidentiality agreements.

He said Lacoste would start selling its products on only those marketplaces that can offer it a premium, no discounting environment.He expects Lacoste India to start selling on the marketplaces in the next two months.

According to Jain, the French company expects 3-5% of sales coming from the Lacoste official website and 5-7% from the e-tailers with which it would tie up.

Sports & Leisure Apparel, the licensee company of Lacoste in India, manufactures 95% of apparel at its Noida facility. The remaining 5% is imported.The sports-inspired brand is looking to expand through franchise network.

Lacoste India has 49 brick-and-mortar stores. About 10 of these are franchised outlets and the rest are company-owned.

Lacoste, which entered India in 1993, started opening franchise stores just one-and-half year ago and it is now betting big on this strategy. In the past financial year, Lacoste opened seven stores out of which four were set up partners. In this financial year, all the six stores it plans to open would be through the franchise route. It also wants to expand beyond the metro cities.

“We wanted to leverage our presence now. So far we were expanding only in metros. But we saw some good retail real estate development in some tier I cities as well. So we thought of expanding into those markets. It makes sense for us to ideally have a local partner in these cities who understands the local customer needs and tastes,” said Jain.

From now onwards, the company will focus more on opening franchise stores in non-metros, where the store size is small. It will open company-owned stores at important locations in metro cities, where it may not make commercial sense for the franchisee because of the huge investment required, he said.



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