Brands
Blue & Blues aims to be a Rs 50 crore brand
KOLKATA: Blue & Blues, an Italian leather products brand, plans to expand its presence to other Asian and Middle East markets by the year 2015, apart from setting up new trends in leather accessories.
It aims to build Rs 50 crore brand within next one and a half year.
The brand was created by two Italian fashion visionaries – Francesco Lanzaratto and Fulvio Rovaris, but after the death of Lanzaratto, Kolkata headquartered leather good exporting company, Unique International, joined hands with Rovaris, to bring the brand to India.
“Our aim is to create a distinct mark of tradition in this lifestyle brand vertical. We are looking at tapping other Asian and Middle East, US and UK markets by the year 2015 for expansion. We aim to build Blue & Blues as a Rs 50 crore brand in the next one and half years,” says Blue & Blues Fashion (India) director Praveen Agarwal.
On the various marketing initiatives undertaken to promote the brand, he says, “The company undertakes various point-of-purchase activities to promote the brand and through different strategies they always highlight a factor which is ‘value proposition’.”
Highlighting some strategic campaigns like ‘coloured leather is all about coloured skin’, Agarwal informs that Ogilvy & Mather is the communication partner.
All Blue & Blues products are styled in Italy. Instead of the conventional black and brown leathers, it uses original leathers in vibrant colours like red, orange, yellow , blue, pink, golden, silver, just to name a few.
When asked about the availability of the leather products, he said that the brand is available at premium MBO’s like Shoppers Stop, Landmark, Central, Lifestyle, Ritu Wears, Witco and in select boutique stores apart from standalone showrooms in Kolkata and Gurgaon. “Internationally, it has its presence in countries like Italy, Austria, Switzerland, Greece, and Belgium among other places,” says Agarwal.
The company also plans to open stores in Delhi followed by Bengaluru, Mumbai and Hyderabad within the next year, concludes Agarwal.
Brands
UK’s OnlyFans seeks US investor at $3bn valuation after owner’s death
The adult video platform is seeking stability after the death of its billionaire owner
LONDON: OnlyFans is looking for a new partner. The London-based adult video platform is in advanced talks to sell a minority stake of less than 20 per cent to Architect Capital, a San Francisco-based investment firm, in a deal that would value the business at more than $3bn (£2.2bn).
The move is driven by an urgent need for stability. Leonid Radvinsky, the Ukrainian-American billionaire who owned OnlyFans, died of cancer last month at the age of 43, leaving the future of one of Britain’s most profitable privately held businesses suddenly uncertain.
The choice of Architect Capital is not arbitrary. The firm has deep expertise in financial services, which aligns neatly with OnlyFans’ ambitions to offer banking products to its creators, many of whom have long struggled to access basic financial services because of the nature of their work.
The numbers behind OnlyFans are, by any measure, staggering. The platform posted revenues of $1.4bn in the year to 30th November 2024, with a pre-tax profit of $684m, up four per cent on the prior year. Payments to creators totalled $7.2bn over the same period, a rise of nearly ten per cent. Radvinsky personally collected $701m in dividends from the business in 2024 alone, on top of more than $1bn in such payments he had already received. The platform, run through its parent company Felix International, hosts 4.6m creator accounts, with performers keeping 80 per cent of subscription proceeds and the platform pocketing the remaining 20 per cent. It has 377m fan accounts in total.
The current minority stake talks represent a notable scaling back of ambitions. In January, OnlyFans was reported to be in discussions with Architect about selling a majority stake of 60 per cent. Before that, the company had explored a sale to a consortium led by Forest Road Company, a Los Angeles-based investment firm. Neither deal materialised.
OnlyFans has built an enormously lucrative business on content that mainstream finance has long refused to touch. Now, with its owner gone and a $3bn valuation on the table, it is looking for the kind of respectable institutional backing that might finally persuade the banks to take its calls.
