Mumbai: Aditya Birla Fashion and Retail Ltd (ABFRL) is looking to grab a bigger pie of India’s booming fast fashion market, currently dominated by Tata-owned Zudio and a host of smaller e-commerce brands, with the launch of its OWND! brand. The company hasn’t been able to scale up in the extremely popular value fashion category, despite investing in more than 25 local and international clothing brands.
In May this year, the company demerged its premium brands, including Van Heusen, Louis Philippe, Allen Solly, and Peter England, into a separate entity —Aditya Birla Lifestyle Brands Ltd (ABLBL) — to streamline operations. However, things haven’t been rosy for the retail giant. The demerger hasn’t addressed ABFRL’s losses over the years, even as the company is struggling to manage its high debts and declining sales.
According to the plan, the company aims to catch up with Zudio by rebranding its existing Style Up stores to the OWND! Brand. There are currently 49 Style Up stores offering branded menswear, womenswear and kidswear across Tier II and Tier III cities. The brand will come with a distinct identity, a unique store layout and a product line that meets current fashion trends.
According to a press release by the company, the company aims to expand the brand to 100 stores by the end of this financial year. “This brand is very sharply targeted to Gen Z. It’s a brand which is built with a deep understanding of the youth culture. We were testing Style Up over the last couple of years, which has given us the confidence that we need to go deeper with this segment, but with a sharper proposition,” Sangeeta Tanwani, chief executive officer, Pantaloons and OWND!, said in an interview with Mint.
Will this be too little too late?
While the company is still in the ‘testing’ phase, Zudio has surged ahead with more than 750 stores since its launch in 2016. The brand defied critics with its offline-only strategy, with Reliance’s Shein and Siyaram’s Zecode looking to ape the brand’s success.
Since its launch in 1999, Aditya Birla has followed the same ‘set up-develop-acquire’ playbook used by Reliance, but has failed to capitalise on the brand’s strengths and the dynamic nature of fashion ever since.
The Kumar Mangalam Birla-led company seems to have woken up from its slumber. What will the brand do differently vis-à-vis Zudio? How will it make a mark in the highly competitive, trend-driven fast fashion market while protecting its margins? Only time will tell.
