Naidu Hall Foot Prints Coimbatore

Home-grown lingerie and apparel brand Naidu Hall, a 70-year-old group, is looking at raising private equity of around Rs 60-75 crore to fund its expansion as well as set up its own manufacturing unit in the city. “We are in talks with some people. Things should materialise in the next few months,” Naidu Hall NaiHaa managing director R Aravind told. Naidu Hall began operations in 1939 and was dependent on in-house manufacturing till 2006. “A couple of years ago, we started outsourcing most of our needs to focus on the retail aspect and expand our network,” Mr Aravind said. Currently, only 25% of its manufacturing needs is met inhouse. As a result of the slowdown, the firms to which NaiHaa had outsourced its requirements reduced production, and subsequently, supplies in the last few months.

“Although our overall business has slowed down in the last three months, our core strength — the lingerie business — is still growing. We realised that going forward, it would make sense for us to manufacture in-house,” he added. The company has located a 15,000-sq ft facility in Padappai, which is expected to be operational by mid-January. It will start with about 200 machines and can scale up to 500 as and when needed. Although its expansion too has slowed down a bit, it has tied up with six stores — one each in Trichy, Erode, Vishakhapatnam and Karur and two in Coimbatore. These would start operations in a phased manner in the next financial year.

While it had initially planned to have about 75 NaiHaa outlets by 2012 to commemorate its 75 years of operations, the number has scaled down to a conservative 45 due to the slowdown. The apparel firm has also made a silent entry into the kids stationery business with A4 a few months ago. “We have A4 store-instores in eight of our NaiHaa outlets in the city. My aim is to start small A4 outlets near schools to cater to the stationery needs of school children,” Mr Aravind said.

Each of these in-store A4 occupies roughly 300 sq ft of space. Its turnover last fiscal stood at Rs 75 crore and hopes to close FY09 at Rs 85 crore. Apart from NaiHaa, the group has three more sub-brands — Feel Good Stores (nine stand alone outlets in the city), Mermaid (three outlets) and Bloopink (four outlets). While Feel Good Stores sell cosmetics and synthetic fashion jewellery, Mermaid is a multi-brand lingerie store Bloopink stocks products for newborns.

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