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“In India, we’ve seen very strong growth throughout the years. Of course, it was a dent with a pandemic, but we are now ahead of pre-pandemic levels roughly 30 per cent in the last nine months of 2022. We’ve seen a growth of 62 per cent over the last year. And we continue to see growth opportunities in India as the watch ownership is still very low at around 10 per cent,” said Tobias Reiss-Schmidt, president and CEO, Timex Group speaking exclusively to ETRetail.Here are the edited excerpts from the interview:-
How important is India as a market for Timex?
India has been an important market for us for a long time. India is now the second largest market after the US for Timex Group.
We’ve seen very strong growth throughout the years. Of course, it was a dent with a pandemic, but we are now ahead of pre-pandemic levels roughly 30 per cent in the last nine months of 2022. We’ve seen a growth of 62 per cent over the last year. And we continue to see growth opportunities in India as the watch ownership is still very low at around 10 per cent.
The demographics in India is young and the average income is increasing. So, more consumers moving into the consuming class. It’s not anymore only about tier 1, but tier 2 cities are becoming really relevant for business. We expect that tier 3 and tier 4 will follow. So, there are so many reasons to be confident.
Tell us about the retail presence of the brand in India and how are you planning to expand.
We are currently available at 5,000 POS and wholesale is the key to our business. Apart from this, we have a strong presence in the traditional trade and this is also an area where we see continued growth and it’s a high-focus area for us.
What is the current share of revenue of online versus offline in India for Timex?
For us, online has been growing in the past few years, but the majority is still offline. At present 25 per cent of our revenue comes from online and 75 per cent offline.
What is the share of metro cities and tier 1 cities versus tier 2 and beyond in India currently?
Top 10 metro cities contribute to about 50 per cent of our revenue and the rest 50 per cent comes from the remaining parts of India.
How are you planning to strengthen the position of the brand in India?
Going ahead, we will be investing in the product. We will be bringing the parts of the global range to India now in a bigger way. We will also be looking at better price point coverage.
We are also continuously looking to expand our capacity on the production side in India. We have more than doubled our capacity in the last five years and we have currently plans to further increase by about 25 per cent. Right now, we have the capacity to produce 3 million products.
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