Indian brick and mortar retailer Shoppers Stop plans to follow an omni-channel strategy, a combination of physical stores and online sales, to grow by making focused and substantial investments to embrace new technologies and infrastructure and aims to be completely debt-free by the end of this fiscal, the company said in its annual report for 2017-18.
The company exited its non-core businesses last year by selling its stakes in Hypercity Retail, Timezone Entertainment Pvt Ltd and Nuance Group (India) Pvt Ltd, its duty-free airport retailing joint venture.Indian brick and mortar retailer Shoppers Stop plans to follow an omni-channel strategy, a combination of physical stores and online sales, to grow by making focused and substantial investments to embrace new technologies and infrastructure and aims to be completely debt-free by the end of this fiscal, the company said in its annual report for 2017-18.#
"We believe that these exits (divestment) will serve in giving us the eagle eye focus required to significantly scale-up our core-businesses while also dramatically change our balance sheet and thereby increase shareholder value. We aim to be completely debt-free by financial year 2018-19," Shopper Stop said in the annual report.
"This year, the company shall focus on strengthening its e-commerce presence to build on the investments made over the last three years to drive more than 100 per cent sales growth, and to create seamless experiences across online and offline in order to drive digitally influenced store sales, as well as adoption of digital channels by store customers and on leveraging its partnership with Amazon," a news agency reported quoting the company document.
The company had raised ₹179.25 crore from global e-commerce giant Amazon by issuing equity shares, amounting to 5 per cent stake, on preferential basis. Shoppers Stop now has an exclusive flagship store on the Amazon marketplace listing the company’s portfolio of 400-plus brands.
The company plans to open four to six department stores and eight to ten beauty stores each year for the next three years to reach a wider and broader footprint. At present, it has 84 stores across India and 13 HomeStop stores.
Shoppers Stop reduced its debt by ₹508 crore during fiscal 2017-18, in which its standalone net profit was ₹11.60 crore. It posted a net loss of ₹19.93 crore in 2016-17. Its total income was down 1.90 per cent to ₹3,607.50 crore in 2017-18 as against ₹3,677.61 crore in the previous fiscal. (DS)
Fibre2Fashion News Desk – India
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