How Globalite Retail became youth's preferred sports lifestyle brand

Having identified the huge potential in Indian market for a mid segment sports lifestyle brand, Aayushi Kishore founded Globalite Retail in the year 2011. Kishore started the venture with a seed capital of Rs 5 crore.

In India, there are top few international brands that only a small fraction of the population could afford. Very few mid-segment brands are available in the market that aspires to come up with affordable quality products targeting the marginalized section of society. Here, Globalite retail plays a crucial role in bridging the gap between haves and have-nots.

Globalite is a sports lifestyle brand, which comprises lifestyle footwear and apparels, with a price range starting from Rs 499 to Rs 1,499. The target customer is young population, who cannot afford top few international brands. Globalite's footwear line includes a sports casual line, sneakers, sports casual shoes, loafers and clogs.

"We started with trading and placement across offline and online channels. By bringing out innovative and internationally inspired casual and sports footwear collection, Globalite has revolutionized and created a new mid segment market, in which it has emerged as the leader," says Aayushi Kishore, Director, Globalite Sport.

Kishore pursued her schooling from DPS RK Puram and is a post-graduate in Economics from Sri Ram College of Commerce. She further completed her studies from London School of Economics in Public Economics and attended a key Entrepreneurship Program at Harvard Business School.

Gaining competitive edge

Since India is a brand-sensitive market, Kishore had to initially go through a lot of troubles to break through the brand loyal mindsets in tier 1 and tier 2 cities. However, she managed to overcome all the crucial snags and penetrated the market by the virtue of "value for money" that Globalite brings with its products.

"We have clearly differentiated our products in design, quality and price. We bring the best fashion, quality and design at the best possible price. Or there are the family brands at the bottom that lack the aspirational value of youthful brand. There is huge vacuum in the mid-segment for an aspirational home grown brand to provide fashionable high quality products at an excellent price," shares Kishore.

Business Model

Globalite sells through both offline and online channels. In a short span of three years, the firm has done sales of Rs 100 crore. Globalite is present in over 300 counters of modern wholesale, like Wal-Mart, Metro CC, Carrefour, Reliance, Tesco, Aditya Birla, TPG, Big Bazaar, etc.

Praising the success and popularity of her venture, Kishore says with a smile, "Home Shop 18, the biggest "Direct to Consumer' media selling channel features Globalite as one of their top selling sports brands. It is the leading brand in its segment on the biggest online retailers like Flipkart, Myntra etc."

Globalite Industries has now put up vast integrated manufacturing facilities catering to captive production. The factory has over 500 people on roll and an equivalent number through contracted labour.

Kishore also emphasised that Globalite is one of the leading and visible brands in the third party e-commerce websites. Globalite also has its own e-commerce portal and app which are in the process of scaling up. The significant number of sales of Globalite is coming from TV shopping channels following which the TV shop Global Fashion Shop has been launched.

60 per cent of the revenue comes from online channels – including third party sites, TV sales, TV shop and app. The remaining comes from offline (distribution network, modern wholesale accounts and own retail stores) channel.

The raw material used in Globalite products are from in-house design , development and research centre that works in collaboration with product development centres based out of China, which helped the company reduce significant amount of cost.

"Globalite Retail will be able to leverage the manufacturing facilities of Globalite Industries to get the margins from manufacturing to retail unlike any other online single brand player," explains Kishore.

Vision

Globalite Retail intended to increase online business for the brand via their portal Globalitesport.com, TV shop Global Fahsion Shop and other third party eCommerce and TV channels.

In addition to the online market, Globalite retail will also be doing the B2C business and retail by opening exclusive retail stores pan India. The firm expects to touch the revenue of Rs 200 crore in FY15-16.

"Reckoning the fact that eCommerce sentiments in India are at its bullish phase, wherein, a lot of international players came in and lot of domestic players got stronger. Benefitting the sentiment, the vision of Globalite industries is to scale up through own portal," concludes Kishore.