Orient Craft to form Rs 350 crore JV with European clothing line

Gurgaon-based textile and clothing export house, Orient Craft, is formalising plans to set up a 50:50 joint venture with sOliver, a $2.5-billion European clothing brand.

The association will build a retail chain of fashion and lifestyle products across the country, Sudhir Dhingra, company chairman and managing director, Orient Craft, said.

Orient Craft already has an exclusive licensing agreement with sOliver under which it has been retailing the latter's products in India for the last three months.

The joint venture will have an investment of Rs 350 crore, that would be raised through a mix of equity and venture capital funding.

The exclusive retail-stores chain will offer the entire range of sOliver's apparel and accessories for children, men and women under the sOliver brand. The JV is expected to be signed in three months from now.

"We have already opened an sOliver store each in Mumbai and Delhi. Our idea is to have around 77 exclusive, company-owned sOliver stores in the next four years," Dhingra said.

Meanwhile, Orient Craft is setting up an apparel-manufacturing facility at Nacharam in Hyderabad at an investment of Rs 50 crore. It currently has 16 plants at Gurgaon, four in Delhi and one in Noida, with a combined manufacturing capacity of 1,00,000 garments per day.

The company is an almost 100 per cent export-oriented company that supplies garments to brands such as Tommy Hilfiger, DKNY, and GAP.