Pothys and RmKV silks soon at Coimbatore
The best-known saree houses, finding little or no space for further expansion at Chennai’s commercial spot T Nagar, are making Coimbatore’s Oppanakara Street their new business hub. Pothys and RmKV Silks, are keen to enter the cotton city. With these, Oppanakara Street that already houses two famous saree shops — Chennai Silks and Sri Ganapathy Silks — is turning into a hub of saree retailers. However, both the companies are taking different routes to enter the market. While Pothys is looking to buy out Shobha Textiles, sources told ET that RmKV is all set to launch its own shop in Coimbatore. Shobha Textiles was a profit making company until the bomb blast in 1998 and by the time it got ready for a relaunch, Chennai Silks had already taken over the market.Managing partner of Pothys, S Ramesh confirmed the plan to acquire the company and said that the deal was still in negotiation stage. Experts say that Pothys is likely to enter the market in the first quarter of calendar year 2008. In September, 2005, Ganapathy Silks, a textile retailer in Tirunelveli district, had its first showroom with a cost of Rs 10 crore. The recent entrant to set a shop in this area is Big Bazaar, the value-retailing store of Pantaloon Retail, that inaugurated its 50,000 sq ft facility in November last year. Textiles firms are betting on the fact that 40-50 jewellery shops in the adjacent Raja Street will help them as the shoppers looking for one-stop shopping will definitely ferry around the Oppanakara Street. This mad rush among retailers to have a presence in this street has resulted in a threefold increase of rentals in this area over the past four years. Rentals now hover at Rs 2300 per sq ft.
