Indiantelevision.com Team

(26 October 2007 7:40 pm)

BANGALORE: International luxury brands retail chain Just in Vogue (JIV) has opened its first stand alone shop in Bangalore and also launched a ladies fashion watch range Aspen.

This is JIV’s second outlet in Bangalore, the first being a shop-in-shop at Bangalore Central. The Aspen rollout is expected to be complete across JIV’s 18 outlets in eight cities in India within the next 2-3 weeks. JIV is targeting the young call center and BPO executives within an age group of 20-35.

JIV plans to retail about 250 watches per month in the price range of Rs 2,500 to Rs 6,500 with about 70 designs across all its retail and planned outlets. "The number of outlets should go up to around 28 over the next 4 months – this will be both shop-in-shop as well as stand alone," said JIV head-marketing Manoj Subramanian.

According to JIV estimates, the demand for luxury brands in India is about Rs 30 billion currently and is expected to double to Rs 60 billion by 2010 and there are 89,000 millionaires and are expected to grow to 1,50,000 by 2010.

Most of the purchases are from the grey markets where quality and services are unreliable, according to Manoj.

According to the official release, JIV plans to change that through its stores by bringing in the concept of merchandising international luxury brands in categories like watches, jewelry, perfumes, cosmetics, writing instruments, and now leather and crystal in 'world class ambience'.

JIV is a two-year old company with revenues of about Rs. 1 billion and is set up by Gili Jewelry brand creator Shailesh Sangani and Shabir Khorakiwala of the Akbarally’s and Wokhardt fame. Next year the company expects revenues of about Rs 1.9 billion.

Manoj has planned ad spends of around Rs 20 million for JIV till February 2008. The activities will be regional specific and include billboards, some print and ground events and visits to call centers and BPOs for promotional activities. The creative work for JIV promotions is done in house as well as with Mumbai based Pinxit & Blues. Media buying is done in-house.