Big Bazaar to make fashion its largest revenue earner

Big Bazaar, the value retailing chain of the Rs 4,500 crore Pantaloon Retail, has drawn up strategies to focus specially on ‘fashion retailing’ or its apparel business to boost overall revenues. It has created ‘Fashion @ Big Bazaar’, a sub-brand, to position the format as much more than food or general merchandise.

To begin with, Big Bazaar is looking at making apparel business its largest revenue generator, as much as 40 per cent in two years and 50 per cent of its overall business, in five years.

Currently sales of apparel make up almost 30 per cent of Big Bazaar’s revenues, which is next only to its food retailing business that makes up almost 40 per cent.

“However, we will focus on apparel as the margins here is as high as 35 per cent compared to food retailing business where margins are probably 12 per cent. So a slight increase in apparel sales boosts the overall business,” explained Amit Kumar, chief at Fashion @ Big Bazaar.

Going forward, Big Bazaar plans to rearrange its apparel and fashion merchandise section in stores in terms of design, layout and elbow space. This is expected to ensure better product display in stores keeping with consumer buying habits and convenience.

Currently Big Bazaars, on an average, span across 45-50,000 sq ft, of which around 35 per cent space is allotted to apparel.

Apparel range in the stores will also be expanded to include more variety and range under its 12 private labels.

The apparel section will experiment with more colours to create a differentiation and will also be segmented to include more product categories.

For instance, while banners like ‘must haves’ will display the latest Big Bazaar offerings in fashion, tags like ‘best deal’ will give a low down on the ongoing freebies and schemes.

Future Group recently clocked over Rs 350 crore of sales in five ‘Mahabachat’ days, with sales exceeding Rs 105 crore on the last day.

“During this time, the largest selling category was apparel. As many as 1 lakh jeans were sold and one lakh sarees as well as some 2 lakh t-shirts,” Kumar added.

Some of Big Bazaar’s private labels, like DJ&C and Knighthood, are already big revenue generators, with DJ&C projecting Rs 1,000 crore in the next three years, from 600 crore right now.