HoP Fashions plans to diversify into retail segments

Kolkata, Jan 16 (UNI) House of Pearl Fashions Limited, a leading multinational manufacturer of ready to wear garments, now plans to diversify into retail marketing business for selling exclusive branded products both in India and abroad.

Announcing this and other plans to promote the new venture, HoP Fashions Executive Vice-Chairman Pallak Seth here today said initially only about ten retail outlets would come up in as many major cities of India before the end of this fiscal, while about 100 more such exclusive outlets showcasing only HoP products would be acquired in different parts of the world.

He said in order to part finance the diversification and expansion programme, HoP Fashions had decided to enter the Indian capital market from today itself with the offering of nearly 5.9 million of equity shares having a price band between Rs 525 and Rs 600 for each share.

Further elaborating the rationale behind making forays into the retail segment, Mr Seth said in the wake of the tremendous boom in the worldwide retail products HoP Fashions planned to acquire a number of medium scale apparel manufacturing and sourcing units in diffrent parts of the world including Vietnam,China,Indonesia and Bangladesh at a total cost of Rs 114 crores.

" Moreover, we have recently tied-up with 51 Chinese garment manufacturing units for sourcing raw materials from them and sending them to nearby Vietnamese stiching plant and branding them under exclusive logo and presenting them to the world market.In the process our production capacity would be doubled from present 20 million pieces to 40 million pieces within the next one year," he said.

Asked about the past business records of the Indian multinational which had already spread its netwrok in ten countries including the USA, Canada, UK. and other several European countries,Mr Seth said last year HoP Fashions' overall global business turnover had crossed the Rs 484 crore mark with the possibility of registering about 15 to 20 per cent growth per annum.

UNI