Good festive sales cheer up Indian apparel retailers

Most of the retailer’s fibre2fashion spoke to mentioned of a jump in year-on-year apparel retail sales in the period between Dusherra and Diwali. Most of the garment retailers spoke of year-on year growth rates of between 10 and 20 percent, while V-Mart even claimed a 30 percent growth on its clothing sales during the festive season.

It was just five months back that, apparel retailers had started the discount season earlier than usual. Fibre2fashion had earlier reported in July that, weak sales during the summer season had forced several apparel brands and retailers to announce their end of season sale, three to four weeks in advance.

Salil Nair - COO at Shopper’s Stop sounded ecstatic when he said, “The apparel business this festive season was quite exciting. In fact, men’s and denim apparel which was a bit sluggish earlier in the year, witnessed interesting sales. The sales were as expected and hence we are happy about it”. 

The CEO of Turtle Ltd - Shitanshu Jhunjhunwalla too seemed delighted in saying, “Although the shopping window was quite small this year, the consumers thronged to the retail outlets as the festival neared. Overall it was a good season with the market sentiment becoming more positive and bringing cheer to the retailers after the dull summer”.

Harminder Sahni – CEO at Wazir Advisors – which provides management consultancy on consumer-focused sectors, too vouched for the fact that apparel retailers had a good time in the festive season, after having faced a bleak summer.

He said, “The period between last Diwali and this Diwali was bleak. Although there was a relative growth of 10 percent, this came on the back of an increase in prices. So consumers thronging to malls and stores in the just gone by festive season, was a big relief for apparel retailers”.

He added a very positive note by saying, “Most of the sales during the festive period came at full prices and not at discounted rates, which enabled the retailers to increase sales with good margins”.

Punit Agarwal, CEO at discount apparel retailer – Promart too was happy with Diwali sales. He said in no less words, “We were happy with our Diwali sales as we had 12-15 new store openings lined up in the month of October and November and this added like fuel to fire to build our awareness and drive sales in Rajasthan and MP/Chhattisgarh”.

“We were able to club our launch budgets with Diwali media spends and the novelty effect of a new store worked well in our favour. This along with our Diwali offer of a mobile phone on shopping worked well for us. The sales in the old stores and new stores are very much in line with our expectations”, he added. .