Proline Changes Attire, Sports A Casual Look

Bangalore-based sportswear company Proline is going in for a massive overhaul of its product line, positioning and marketing strategy to take on competition. With the thin line between sports and casual wear becoming increasingly blurred, Proline has decided to re-position itself as a leisurewear brand. Says Proline's chief executive officer Kabir Lumba: "We wanted to take advantage of the market mood. So we are now offering cotton trousers, chinos, casual wash shirts, track pants, all at very competitive prices."

With this paradigm shift in strategy, Proline is now looking at a 75 per cent casual wear and 25 per cent sports wear product mix. "We don't want to lose the sports wear tag because it has some inherent advantages like high brand equity and recall. But unless we move into the casual wear business, we will be limiting growth,'' says Lumba.

 

On the revamp mode for the last few months, Proline is chipping away at creating a new look to bring back the young set of customers to its snazzy, new shopfloors. ``With time, the Proline customer was getting older, so we have been working at getting the old designs and attitude out and repositioning ourselves as a predominantly leisure wear brand rather than a sports-only one,'' says Lumba.

To achieve a young, dynamic look, the company now wears a new logo - a mix of navy blue, red and white and sports a new punchline "Whatever be the game ....play on." Apart from better packaging its has also introduced a more "with-it" contemporary colour palette with a lot of brown, beige and khaki interspersed with its traditional offerings.

The company has also launched a new line of western women's leisure wear and is beefing up its sportswear range for women which will take about six months to get into the shelves. ``We will be pricing very competitively and have about two or three price points that are lower than competition,'' says Lumba.

Proline will increase its ad spend to about Rs 2 crore over the next one year and pitch mainly for outdoor and television slots as its print media campaign has failed to break the clutter. It also intends to bring in the world famous K-Swiss and Fila brands to India through the franchisee route.

Proline's exclusive stores in Chennai, Hyderabad and Mumbai have all been redesigned to give the place a very international ambience with minimalist decors, clean, uncluttered window displays and lots of floor space. "Now that we have plunged into the South, we want to first service it, saturate business there, and then move on. We don't want to spread ourselves too thin which we did earlier," says Lumba.

Capital city Delhi is Proline's next destination for its exclusive store which is expected to be operational by July. Lumba says the recent feedback on Proline's revamped range , especially from high profile multi-brand outlets has been good vis-