Being Human Clothing opened its first all-women-employee run store in Bengaluru’s Indira Nagar on 5th March 2023. The brand – which is part of ‘Being Human – The Salman Khan Foundation’ – has plans to open more such stores in India and later internationally, revealed CEO Sanjeev Rao in conversation with MediaNews4u.com.
“Being Human as a brand stands for a lot of things. We stand for women empowerment and also make sure that specially abled people are employed in our stores. We decided that when we open the Indiranagar, Bengaluru store, it should be a fully women employee store. We are planning to open many such stores giving employment to women. We are also tying up with certain organisations which train women who are just out of college, possibly from lesser strata of income groups. On a parallel, we are working with certain agencies, to recruit soldiers who are war hit. We are trying to give them the dignity that they deserve by employing them not only across our stores but also in offices. We have started the process and hopefully they will join us in the second or third quarter of this year,” said, Rao.
The brand expects to have between 80 and 85 exclusive brand stores by the end of March 2023 and add 50 in the next financial year. From three stores internationally, it intends to grow the count in the next financial year. The brand is present in Nepal and Bangladesh currently and has firmed up plans to enter Canada and Dubai next. The brand had a larger international presence earlier but had to start from scratch post Covid in 2020, when the management also took over from licensee Mandhana Retail Ventures.
Within India, 60 percent of the new stores planned will be in Tier 2 and 3 towns with the rest being in metros and mini metros, revealed Rao.
He explained, “When it comes to expansion plans, for us India works of course, but Bharat works better. The story is all about Bharat where all the business action is. They are the Tier 2, 3, 4 towns where people are so exposed to the discovery of brands on mobile phones. Because of the internet penetration, people know what is happening across the world and they have the money to spend and that’s where we wish to be. Most of our expansions are in Bharat, but not that we ignore India. We are present in all the top malls. We focus a large part in Bharat because that’s the emerging India.”
The brand’s website mentions that it is present at over 500 retail touchpoints. These include large format stores are departmental stores.
“They don’t grow at the pace at which our Exclusive Brand Outlets ( EBOs) grow. Today we are spread across Shoppers Stop, Lifestyle, Central, Fashion Factory etc, and whatever the growth of large format stores, we grow with them,” noted the CEO.
The brand that was born selling T-shirts in 2012 is now present across men’s fashion (75pc), women’s fashion started two seasons ago (12 to 15pc) and accessories.
It is also active now on multiple online marketplaces. “In 2018, we were very exclusive to one or two portals, right now we are open with all the marketplaces and are doing extremely well. e-commerce contributes 18 to 19pc of the overall sales and is growing, which according to me is a healthy trend from a fashion perspective,” he added.
The CEO stated that the brand sees sales of Rs.50 crore from marketplaces and should do about a tenth of that from its own online platform by end-March.
