Entrepreneurial effort in starting a footwear brand in India - a business plan

Abstract

EXECUTIVE SUMMARY This Business Plan is about launching a footwear brand in the value range that would provide reasonable quality leather footwear products at affordable prices. Currently footwear industry is growing at 11 to 12 % (2005 – 06) and there is not even a single well known brand existing at value range (Rs. 400 to 800) of the market. But from our segmentation analysis we have found out that almost more than 50% of the leather footwear shoppers are shopping from unbranded outlets. And their psychographics and behavior analysis showed that they also want to get associated with popular brands but because of lack of resources and unavailability of popular brands in that value range they are limiting themselves to unbranded products. So we decided to establish a strong brand in this value segment of leather footwear. The brand that is going to be launched would be as popular as existing brands in the market and if established properly, it will be a single brand operating in the lower level segments of leather footwear products. The novel factor that is going to be brought in would be the shopping experience that is generally experienced by higher level segments who shop in branded outlets to lower level segments by launching exclusive brand outlets to cater to customers who are resource constrained but willing to get associated with a trendy and popular brand. As we have understood our market needs and clear about the product types we are going to launch we went a head and started analyzing about locations where the stores could be started and also started researching on product sourcing options. After an extensive analysis we have found out that Bangalore is a suitable location for initial launch and short listed two places to launch our exclusive branded outlets. We have also designed the store layout. Our first and basic goal being establishing a strong brand name in the value range of leather footwear market, we have left our future options open. We have no intention to start a big chain of retail outlets as other popular players are doing, we may as well leverage the rise of non specialty stores like Big Bazaar to sell our products. But our only goal is to make the brand very popular.We have researched more into sales’ dynamics of leather footwear to forecast our future sales and to come up with an amount that will be needed for us to get started. We estimated our sales based on the size of the segment and sales patterns we have observed in other stores from our visits. From our financial analysis we have found out that INR 1 Crore will be needed to start two outlets (3000 sq. ft each) in Bangalore. From our further analysis we have mentioned the number of units to be sold, volume of revenues to be generated and number of months needed to break even. We will be breaking even in 11 months period.