Citizen Watches to open 10 outlets in the north

Citizen Watches India, a 100 per cent subsidiary of Citizen, Japan, has drawn up expansion plans for the northern region.

Over the next one year it plans to set up 10 showrooms, and 25 over three years, according to a senior executive of the firm.

One showroom each is coming up in Varanasi, Lucknow, and Agra. The Delhi showroom will open in July and the Jaipur one in December. The Ludhiana showroom will come up in March, and the one in Greater Noida next year.

Rajasthan has been a promising area for the company, where the growth rate has been 60 per cent over the past two years.

In eastern and western UP, the growth rate has been 50-55 per cent, while it has been 30 per cent for Delhi. In the northern region, the rate of growth has been 50 per cent.

On average, Rs 15 lakh will be invested in each showroom, the average floor area of which will be 650 sq feet.

The price range of the company's quartz watches is Rs 2,200-7,500 and the one for its eco-drive watches in Rs 5,000-40,000.

Citizen Watches is a Rs 60 crore company. Initially it was manufacturing watches as a partner of Doshi and Doshi, but when the import duty on watches was brought down from 25 per cent to 12.5 per cent, it started selling the products of its parent firm.

The firm has recently signed up India's cricket captain Rahul Dravid as one of its brand ambassadors.