AG Talk | Raymond all set to expand aggressively: Behl

As India touches new heights in the field of science, technology, economy etc its long standing legacy in areas like agriculture, textile etc is not far behind. While India is known for its differentiated textile market, around the world, back home, businesses in this industry are taking all efforts to offer world class products.

While traditionally, clothing and fabrics in India have been subjective to individuals, one name that runs common in many Indian homes is Raymond, a brand that has had a strong legacy of giving best end-to-end solutions for fabrics and garmenting.

This year Raymond completes a historic milestone of 90 glorious years. A journey that started in 1925, which within a span of a few years, transformed Raymond from being an Indian textile major to a global conglomerate.

Today, the Raymond Group is vertically and horizontally integrated to provide customers total textile solutions. Industry observation is that few companies globally have such a diverse product range of nearly 20,000 varieties of worsted suiting to cater to customers across age groups, occasions and styles. Some brands in its portfolio including Raymond Ready-to-Wear are Park Avenue, Parx, ColorPlus, Makers amongst others. Raymond has one of the largest exclusive retail networks in the textile and fashion space in India.
To mark its 90th anniversary, Raymond launched another range of fabric, titled ‘Regio Italia’ which is positioned as a luxurious, elite and finest Italian fabric up for grabs for its customers.

Adgully caught up with Sanjay Behl, CEO, Raymond Ltd to know more about the new collection, his stint with one of India’s legacy companies and a look-back at the glorious 90 years of the brand. For records, Behl who joined Raymond group in 2013, has have worked with companies like Reliance ADA Group, Nokia, while he began his career with Hindustan Unilever.

Adgully (AG): What prompted you to launch Regio Italia?
Sanjay Behl (SB): Raymond has always been at the forefront of product innovation and continues to stay invested in world-class product engineering and ‘state-of-art’ manufacturing facilities. The growing demand for premium fabric has steered us to introduce Regio Italia, a premium range of Italian suiting fabric for those who have a taste for international fashion. This new offering from Raymond will be available with our select trade partners and at ‘The Raymond Shops’, who have the expertise in handling the super-premium product range and have a history of servicing a luxury clientele over the years.

AG: Raymond completed 90 years of excellence...If you have to share some key highlights of the journey so far, what would they be?
SB: The group is built on the core principle of catering the needs and demands of its consumers. Three key factors that have made Raymond carved its place in the consumer’s heart are: product quality, trade channel strength and our brand equity. The vision packed with high amount of passion in making sure that the best quality products leave the factory premises and reach its customer has been the core concern of the company. Undoubtedly, from last 9 decades the product quality at Raymond has never changed and been questioned ever. 
Secondly, we have had relations which are coming from generations to generations with our consumers. Raymond stands tall with over 1000 stores across various towns, markets and countries which not only helps the customer experience the brand closely but also enhances our partnership with multi-brand outlets in the country. Raymond is one of the deepest penetrated brands with over 30,000 point of sale.
Thirdly, the brand has made a strong equity in the market and has transformed from ‘disillusion to the bestest male’ in 1980s to a ‘complete man’ in 1990s to ‘Feel the heaven’ in 2000s and now to ‘Regio Italia’. The brand has managed to fight all odds and stand tall among the social-economic and ever changing demands of its consumers.

AG: What are the other initiatives planned to mark the 90th year and thereafter?
SB: Well, there are a lot of initiatives planned on going forward; starting from expansion of our stand alone stores to re-innovation of some of our best Raymond Stores across the country to upping our quality offerings.

AG: The industry that you cater to is one of the most fragmented ones. How do you strategize your plans and products?
SB:  We at Raymond study, strategise and understand where the need of the brand is. There are certain markets which have strong legacy of our brand and really loyal customer base; but at the same time there are certain markets where we lack behind in terms of acceptance, so, we target to fill in the gaps in those markets. For example, the youth of today is dressing very differently; so Raymond worked upon this fact and today we  have one of the most stylist and best range of suiting for them. We, year on year, target to cater to every segment possible with best quality and great design.

AG: As Raymond has various other business segments and brands under its umbrella, which is been the most successful one?
SB: If you look at the history of the brand then the suiting and trousering business has been one of the successful segment of our brand which has given really good results. Also we have really significant part of our business coming from the export wherein we export one of the finest fabric jackets to brands like Banana Republic, Calvin Klien etc.

AG: How can you elaborate on the evolution of retail industry?
SB: Retail industry has been growing while the formats keep evolving. Till about 90s, the wholesale and convention retail was the main stay for brands like Raymond. But from late 90s, when the large format retail stores came in with massive malls etc, the whole look and feel of the retail industry changed. That gave the consumers a very different approach towards the retail industry and now in 2013 and 2014 saw a drastic growth in the stand-alone stores and the advent of e-commerce industry which again gave a new shape to the retail industry. So while the industry is growing, the formats are evolving year on year. Since we are a pan-India player, we have been and will always be focused towards omni-channel strategy and each channel plays a vital role for us.
While e-commerce gives you a wider and easy range of products but major parts of our country still believe in experientially buying clothes therefore we at Raymond focus on every need and demand of our customer whether its online, offline or anything. However, few months back, keeping in mind the penetration of e-commerce we also launched our own web portal.

AG:  As you rightly mentioned about the advent of e-commerce industry, how do you think, will the standalone retailers survive in such a scenario?
SB: I strongly feel that it is 18 to 24 month journey where the equilibrium will settle down soon. We are talking about the e-commerce trade industry that contributes less than 1 percent of the total retail industry in India and the organized retail is 6 to 7 percent and rest is continuing to survive and thrive within our consumption economic industry. So, if we look at the macro economy which is 6 to 7 percent, I think there is a fair play for each of these channels to continue. E-commerce is set to grow very aggressively in the coming few years given the proposition of delivering on time, any time shopping, easy and convenient bookings and collecting cash back and cash on delivery though.

AG: How are you planning to expand your stand-alone stores?
SB: We are surely expanding our footprints. Every quarter we keep adding 20 to 25 new stores. It could be for different propositions we have. We continue to expand in Park Avenue and Color Plus. We opened our 100th store on Color Plus recently and in total we have added 8 new stores in the last six months. We added similar numbers on Park Avenue too, 10 stores to Made To Measure range. We are all set for dramatic expansion!

AG: Today marketing plays a vital role in every industry. What are the strategies that you follow at Raymond?
SB: We have been really aggressive in marketing and advertising from the last couple of years, especially in terms of evolving brand proposition of ‘The Complete Man’ and a wide collection of our product range. We are also expanding our product portfolio in the premium segment with the launch of Regio Italia. By: Aanchal Kohli | Twitter: @aanchalkohli