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Apr, 01 2007

Excalibur formal wear wardrobe solutions

Excalibur is introducing a new fashion in retail by providing strong franchising opportunities for EBO\'s. The company strives to provide right platform and support to its prospective partners

Excalibur, after establishing itself as a leader in formal wear, has now added a range of ‘After hours’ shirts and trousers suited for casual moments for an individual's life.

LAUNCHED by Arvind Brands Ltd., in 1997 as a wardrobe brand in the mid-price segment, Excalibur's range consists of shirts, trousers, T-shirts and accessories, aimed at the 22 to 35 years male executives, self-employed professionals in metros and mini-metros.

Excalibur stepped into retailing in India through 40 exclusive stores in 20 top cities, and aimed at providing a shopping experience that was not available to the consumers in this segment.

Today, standing strongly at a position of value-for-money wardrobe solution, Excalibur caters to consumers in the SEC A2 B1 segment. It's 71 Cr brand is a leading national player, and with an ambitious retail expansion plan, it is bound to grow by 50 per cent in the coming years.

Excalibur is currently available through Excalibur exclusive stores in select locations across India, and 1,200 multi brand outlets and large formats stores, like Shoppers Stop, Lifestyle, Globus, Central and Piramyd. The brand also has a strong international presence in the markets of Middle East, Srilanka, Nepal and Bangladesh.

Excalibur is expanding its merchandise categories in order to bring lifestyle around the brand, along with positioning of a new brand communication.

The Excalibur Wardrobe

The product range consists of shirts and trousers (formal and semi formal), T-shirts, blazers, and a wide range of accessories, like ties, socks, handkerchief, belts and small leather goods. Formal ties in elegant prints and yarn dyed stripes compliment the range of shirts and trousers. Socks in cotton blend to go with formal dressing are available in a wide palette of colours. A clean, white 100 per cent fine cotton handkerchief just about completes the formality.
Excalibur after establishing itself as a leader in formal wear has now added a range of 'After hours' shirts and trousers suited for casual moments for an individual's life.

The Retail story

The new look retail store design commenced with the first store opening in Bangalore on DVG Road on April 11, 2005, and, thereafter, the list has been growing. Today, Excalibur has about 27 new look stores, which are built on the new retail design. The floor size of these stores ranges between 500 sq.ft to 1,500 sq.ft.

A swanky 2,100 sq.ft Excalibur Flagship store will open shortly in Pondy Bazaar, Chennai. A few more Excalibur stores will soon be visible in Kanpur, Haridwar, Moradabad, Delhi, Ludhiana, Mohali, Jaipur, Agra, Kolkota, Goa, Ahmedabad, Rajkot, Jodhpur, Patna, Jamshedpur, Indore and Mumbai.

This year, Excalibur is poised to open 110 exclusive stores across India. While focusing on the fashion-conscious consumer working in middle management position, Excalibur chooses to target towns that have a good working population with reasonable spending power.

Requirements and support

Investment: The investment range required is about 12 to 15 lakh on interiors and garments stocks. Excalibur provides the franchisee a healthy advertising cover to build and support retail awareness and local brand building tools to strengthen secondary sales.

Return on investment: An ideal showroom can deliver a healthy per square foot per day rupee sales of about 28, and has proved to be a successful retail-franchising model.

Team Excalibur: A strong brand team has been put together under the able leadership of Mr J Suresh who has around two decades of mass-market experience. A highly-motivated team comprising of designers, merchandisers, retail planners, production and quality control, supply chain have been put in place to ensure that world class merchandise reaches the shelves on time. The Excalibur marketing team ensures that a strong advertising and visual merchandising back the merchandise.

Store staff training is an integral part of Excalibur retail. Special skills are imparted to the store fashion assistants with emphasis on customer interaction skills and product trainings. Retail trainers at Arvind ensure that the grooming is continuous and relevant.

Sales and service teams stationed in the regions become the local touch points to ensure smooth functioning of business transactions.

Wired to save time

Arvind, in its effort to bring down the 'time to market', has put together a web ordering site where the franchisee can log in using the user id and password and place the order online. This not only brings down the supply time but also brings in the accuracy in order and help to track the order thereby increasing the stock turns and retail profitability.
Excalibur exclusive stores are on common retail software that connects to a central server providing valuable retail sales data at SKU level, which enables the supply chain system to provide timely replenishment.
Excalibur is committed to become a complete Men's lifestyle brand from a high quality shirts brand. With extreme confidence Excalibur want to create a strong business opportunity for EBO's and provide good franchising opportunities. Excalibur believes in providing the right platform and support to its partners in achieving the business goal.

For business enquiries:

Mr Naveen Arora, Ph: 09342165944,
e mail - retailex@arvindbrands.com

BOX ITEM

In view to make its commitment strong for providing a strong equity of Excalibur and make it a mega garments brand, we are offering a complete wardrobe solution for today's men. Excalibur a widely available brand across the country in 1200 multi brand outlets is the leading shirts brand, offering high quality shirts at affordable prices.

We at Excalibur are strategizing to open 200 exclusive brand outlets, covering 100 cities in the coming two years. These outlets will be exquisitely designed offering great ambience ease of shopping and showcasing the complete product range of Excalibur. In providing our consumers excellent merchandise we will utilize extensively the expertise and fabric strength of Arvind Mills, which will be a unique opportunity available only for Excalibur.

In short we would like to establish Excalibur as a complete Men's lifestyle brand. We offer an exciting business prospects for the franchisees of EBO's and an opportunity to work with the growing brand like ours.

Store Model

Design elements: Simplistic and contemporary.

Colour theme: Light colours and tones to underplay the fixtures and highlight the merchandise. The product in bright colours and forms becomes the centre of visual attention.

Lighting: Powerful, bright lighting. Good ambient lighting and adequate task lighting to highlight merchandise, cover lighting on the ceiling, backlit frosted glass on the wall units to make the fixtures feel light and cool.

Flooring: Mirror polish 2X2 vitrified tiling. Reflected lighting-effect of the ceiling lights makes the store look swanky.
Entrance: Unique French door design with an element of wooden paneling to make it stand out in the market place. A transition zebra crossing element on the flooring demarcates the store and is a signature element of Excalibur store.
Display elements: Mannequin stands/accessories, unit/bookcase display as well new arrival sections add to the shoppers' retailing experience and induces impulse buying.

Signage: A stylishly main façade signage with backlit cut letters gives a classy and international look.

Floor display: Show windows as well as the floor nesting tables reflect international retail trends.

Stock Levels: Showroom provides for stock density of 2.25 to 2.5 garments per sq.ft, or 1,250 to 1,400 garments for a 600 to 700 sq.ft showroom. This is adequate to help display the variety and width of range and ensure better conversion of casual walk-in into sale.

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