Landmark plans five new stores

Landmark, the chain of books and music retail stores run by Trent Limited of the Tata Group, is planning to expand its network in India by opening five new stores in the country in the next year.

Landmark chief operating officer Himanshu Chakrawarti told media persons on Thursday that the number of company's books and music stores will go from seven now to 13 by 2008. The company will open its first store in Pune on the 14th of this month and has plans for another in the year 2007-08, he said.

Landmark is currently present at Chennai (3 locations) and Kolkata, Vadodara, Mumbai and Gurgaon (1 each). The company will open Pune and Lucknow stores in the current year (06-07).

Chakrawarti said one additional store will be opened in Mumbai and Pune, and the company will enter the Delhi and Coimbatore. The company will look at large format stores for Landmark, he said, without indicating how much will be invested in the new stores.

Trent also operates Westside chain of retail stores largely devoted to apparels. Chakrawarti said it was the company's strategy to go where Westside goes.

"We will be present together in the malls coming up in our target cities where we will together hold about 25,000 sq ft location," Chakrawarti said.