Reliance Autozone plans private labels

Reliance Autozone, an automotive specialty format of Reliance Retail Limited, is planning to introduce its private labels in select categories “once it builds some kind of a critical mass in the next one-and-a-half to two years,” said Reliance Retail’s chief executive officer (automotive services), Arun Dey.

“The plan is still in the initial stage and we are in the process of identifying the products and manufacturing companies. Our idea is to introduce private labels, especially utility items, during the next financial year when we will be adding another 10-15 stores to our chain,” Dey told Business Standard.

A relatively new entrant in the domestic auto accessory retail market, pegged at Rs 4,200 crore of which the organised sector accounts for 20 per cent, Reliance Autozone currently has six stores in the country – one each at Gurgaon, Jaipur, Ghaziabad, Jamnagar, Mumbai and Hyderabad.

 

Announcing the company’s foray into south India with the launch of its first store in Hyderabad on Friday, Dey said the company would be adding four more standalone stores by March 2010, including two in Andhra Pradesh, besides scaling up its shop-in-shops in the group’s hypermarket format Reliance Mart, from the present three to 10 during the same time frame.

“Each of the standalone stores will typically have a carpet area of between 2,000 sft and 3,500 sft and will reach an optimal level when the sales touch Rs 25-30 per sft a day. We expect each of these stores to achieve breakeven in one-and-a-half years from the launch,” Dey said.