Exclusive | On a double digit growth ride YOY: Max Lifestyle's Shekhar

Max, India’s leading value fashion brand recently unveiled ‘Runway by Max’ - their new line of high fashion for young women inspired by Miss India, at the Max store in Metropolis Mall. The collection has been created specially by the Max design house to mark their collaboration with Pond’s Femina Miss India in its golden jubilee as the official fashion partner.

Adgully caught up with C. S. Shekar, President – Retail Operations, Max at the event to know more about the new collection and their strategies ahead.

He says, “Our association with Femina Miss India reinforces our endeavour to ‘Democratize fashion’ and foster talent. We are indeed happy to come onboard as the official Fashion partner and intend to take the property to an all new level in its 50th year. Leveraging the far reach of the brand across 35 cities, Max jointly with Femina is determined to take the pageant beyond metros to recognize hidden talent across the country.”

The association with Femina Miss India comes as strategic decision to take Max to newer heights and jointly uncover the fresh talent across the nation. As the official Fashion Partner, Max will be seen styling the contestants through the pageant and will aid Femina Miss India in taking the contest to the length and breadth of the country with the far reach of the brand across 35 cities with over 65 stores.

When asked to share some key high points of Max’s journey so far Shekar said, “We started our journey in 2006 with our first store in Indore which in itself was a big challenging step since people generally want to start with big cities and markets. Strategically, if we see Indore became a big success for us as we got the pulse of the people from across the country with the city being located in the central part.”

The collection is already available in stores covering all the metros . “We are very keen on containing this collection and year after year we will be coming out with a new  “Runway collection,” Shekhar added.  He also went on to  inform that the designing part is still with Max’s robust in-house design team.  The new collection will be promoted by Max’s best strategy of connecting with the customers personally through e-mails, sms , word of mouth and Social Media too is expected to play an important role.  “We have taken a keen interest in conducting a market and data base research, after which we will update our regular customers with our new collections and initiatives,” Shekar told us.     

This October Max will be foraying itself in the league of TV commercials with JWT as their advertising agency.  “Our whole and sole motive is to give our customers best quality fashion at fantastic rates thus enhancing their shopping experience. Secondly one more high point of our life is the fact we are the only fashion brand who have made their own and franchise stores, both profitable,” he adds.

On asking about the strategies that would be adopted in 2013, Shekar said, “The year 2012 has been a commendable year and we were able to set some benchmarks in the retail industry and in 2013 we would be consolidating it. We wish to be a profitable company and would be taking it to the next level hence giving a chance to the youth in smaller cities as well to experience our product. The growth was quite a decent double digit growth.”

Delhi is an important market for Max considering it has a large fashion-conscious young population who are intelligent shoppers seeking value for money. In India, Max has over 60 stores across 35 cities including Bangalore, Mumbai, Delhi, Chennai, Kolkata, Hyderabad, Pune, Noida, Gurgaon, Cochin, Thane, Ghaziabad, Bhubaneswar, Trichy, Coimbatore, Jabalpur, Jalgaon, Amritsar,  Bhopal, Baroda, Siliguri, Indore, Raipur, Ahmedabad, Vishakhapatnam, Agra, Lucknow, Calicut, Durgapur, Mangalore, Trivandrum, Hubli, Mysore & Bareilly. The brand plans to have a network of 80 stores by 2012-13.

Speaking about the key markets he said though they have quite a robust presence the focus would still be the metros. He believes that to expand growth year on year one should have clear focus towards metros looking at the growing opportunity there. He concluded to say, “But there is no doubt about the fact that Tier I and Tier II markets are also growing at a rapid speed.”
Max, a division of Lifestyle International (P) Ltd., has pioneered the concept of ‘value fashion’ in the country, thereby offering the discerning shopper a vast choice with international fashion & quality. |By Aanchal Kohli [aanchal(at)adgully.com]