IndiaRetailBiz

“The company’s primary business comes from metros. But small towns will contribute significantly in company’s growth for the next two years.”– Subrata Dutta, COO, Samsonite South Asia.

Samsonite, among the world’s leading travel gear brands, is growing fast in its core business of travel luggage. Having introduced a number of new and innivative products in the past two years, its market share has gone up by 6%, commanding almost one third of (32%) of the Rs. 1,200 crore travel luggage market. It has also recently forayed into Rs. 11,000 crore footwear business.

Buoyed by surging consumer spending on travel gear, Samsonite, is scaling up its operations. While, expecting to grow by 40% in sales, it has planned to increase the number of its exclusive stores from 172 to 210, by December, 2008.

Samsonite operates through a combined ownership model. It has both company and franchisee owned stores which on an average occupy between 1,000 and 1,200 sq ft of space.

While, bulk of Samsonite’s sales, like many other upmarket consumer goods, comes from metro markets, it expects in the next two years to garner its major growth from tier II and III cities. As such, the company in future would focus on expanding into smaller cities.

Apart from travel luggage products, which in the next three years are expected to contribute 80% of business, Samsonite expects its recently launched footwear and travel accessories business to contribute balance 20% of the business, reports Business-Standard.

After entering the footwear business in lifestyle segment through its Samsonite and Black labels, which are expected to garner sales of Rs 100 crore in three years, Samsonite is also looking at extending its footprint by entering the watch and eyewear segments.