Puma to differentiate products for e-comm, brick-and-mortar platforms

German sportswear and apparel maker Puma is looking to balance its portfolio between e-commerce platform and brick-and-mortar stores.

According to Abhishek Ganguly, Managing Director, Puma India, the company will look to extend a set of unique products.

What this means is, a particular product — say a pair of sneakers — will be exclusive to online stores and not available in the physical stores.

Sources point out that launching such distinct product lines for online shopping sites has become the norm with many lifestyle brands hoping that such a move will prevent discounted e-commerce sales from cannibalising their physical stores.

“We cannot overlook e-commerce and hence we are looking to have a product differentiation strategy starting this year’s autumn-winter collection (beginning August). This differentiation will reduce channel conflict,” Ganguly told BusinessLine .

By August, it is looking to keep 25 per cent of its merchandise exclusive for both online and brick-and-mortar stores. And by February 2016, this percentage will jump to nearly 75 per cent.

Currently, 10 per cent of the company’s revenue comes from online sales; which is expected to rise to 15-20 per cent soon.

The sportswear-maker claims to be the leading brand in its category here in India in terms of turnover and competes with the likes of Adidas, Nike, Reebok and others. Its India operations turned profitable in 2009 and since then has written-off pervious losses.

India strategy According to Ganguly, one of the reasons why the sportswear maker has been successful in the country is because of its cautious store expansion plans.

Last year, it had 340 stores and a presence in 110 cities. Of these stores, 40 were company-owned. The other part of its India strategy will be to introduce leading brands here from its global kitty on par with international launches. As a part of the strategy, it introduced ‘Ignite’ series of running shoes. The ‘Mobium’ and ‘Faas’ branded footwear series were also launched recently.

“We will continue to position ourselves as an aspirational brand. People’s tastes are getting global and they are abreast of our global launches,” he added. Another focus area will be technology-based offerings — such as footwear designed specially for running or jogging and so on.

At present, footwear accounts for 52 per cent of its total turnover; with apparels and accessories accounting for the remaining 38 and 10 per cent respectively.

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