Fitness, health contributed to our success in 2021: Puma's Abhishek Ganguly

Sales of Puma India, India’s largest sports brand, crossed Rs 2,000 crore and grew 68 per cent over 2020 despite the pandemic. In an interview with Sharleen D’Souza, Managing Director (India and Southeast Asia) Abhishek Ganguly talks about what made the company grow in 2021 despite the pandemic. Edited excerpts:

How did Puma India manage strong top line growth in 2021 despite it being a challenging year?
 

Indians are becoming conscious about health and fitness. People are taking part in more sports and consuming sports-performance products. Another contributing factor is strong consumer demand for sports-inspired clothing, called athleisure. It has emerged as both a fashion trend and a fashion essential today. So, I would say these are a couple of factors that have worked in favour of our category.
 

Which categories performed well in the pandemic?
 

There were broadly two that primarily contributed to our success. One was the running and training category because people focused on fitness and health. The second space where we saw a lot of growth was in sports-inspired lifestyle products. The athleisure trend came in with people staying indoors. Each time the markets opened, people stepped out to engage in socialising, which resulted in a movement towards sneakers, track pants, shorts, and casual jackets.
 

From a demographic perspective, we saw growth in women’s wear and kids’ wear. More than ever, kids are conscious about adopting sports and fitness and making them an integral part of the lifestyle at a very early age. That is a pivotal change I am seeing in India. PUMA’s share of lifestyle and performance wear is currently balanced at 50-50 in percentage terms.
 

How did your online sales pick up in 2021?
 

Puma.com is 7-8 per cent of our business now and grew 175 per cent in 2021 over the previous year. We were also the largest external brand on Myntra, Flipkart Fashion, and Ajio. Including marketplaces, our online contribution has surged to 43 per cent of our sales in 2021 from 36 per cent in 2020. For our own e-commerce platform, we plan to increase its share of contribution to 10 per cent of our sales in 2022.

How many stores did you open in 2021?
 

Fifty-one, taking the total to 411. We filled a few gaps in terms of exclusive stores. We were bullish on that front, which might be counter-intuitive during the significant crisis in the country. But we took that bet. We also signed new collaborations, new partnerships, and new ambassadors during this time.
 

What are the kinds of partnerships you signed in 2021?
 

During the pandemic, we took a bet on Royal Challengers Bangalore (RCB, Indian Premier League team) after a long hiatus from investment in the tournament as most of the global sports brands had exited that space. In 2021, we collaborated with cricketer K L Rahul to launch a casual wear line named 1Der. We strengthened the PUMA X One8 line with Virat Kohli by launching an exclusive online collection for Myntra and also brought in an athleisure line with the RCB team. Several athletes were signed up across sporting disciplines such as track and field, boxing, men’s hockey, women’s hockey, and women’s cricket. We also signed up para-athletes and acquired a lot of these partnerships during this time. I would say it is counterintuitive when people were conserving their investments on such things.