Payless Shoesource has India on radar as huge opportunity, says Executive VP

Payless Shoesource is setting up base in India with stores in Mumbai, Bangalore, Hyderabad, Kochi, Coimbatore, Madurai, Mangalore, and Mysore. An American discount footwear retailer headquartered in Topeka, Kansas, it started franchisee business in India in association with Reliance Retail Ltd Payless currently has about 4,400 stores in more than 30 countries around the world.

Steve Gish, Executive Vice President, Payless ShoeSource said... It took us a long time to work out the courage to go to the international market and what we found from the start is that our brand works really well around the world. And it works particularly well in emerging markets that are growing quickly and there is an emerging middle class, which is why on trend products with great value makes it the kind of place where people will shop… In 2009 we started to do franchising. So we have started fairly recently in the franchising business and we have always have had India on our radar as a huge opportunity and we connected with our friends at reliance. We think they're the right partner and we're fortunate to be in business with them. Great experience across a lot of businesses, particularly retail. So it sounds perfect.

Gopalakrishnan Sankar, Reliance Retail's CEO of Footwear Business said..This is value fashion. The idea was to convert a lot of the unorganised market today in footwear, which is as high as 60 per cent, to the organised fold. The price range here typically you could fit most of it between Rs. 500 and Rs. 2500. It's a tight range.

We're looking for serious market leadership in the (footwear) segment, and you achieve that with different formats. We have an existing format (Reliance Footprints), which is doing its job. Then we have Payless, which is in the value segment, also the broadest segment. Because the prices are attractive and it is a family store, it can travel far and beyond. It can go beyond the first 100 top cities. So you can open as many stores as the market can take. So it's a big vehicle to capture market share in a short period of time. Footprint we have crossed 200 stores across 100 cities, and Payless has the potential to go well across 100 cities. It could go to tier 2 cities, tier 3 also. We'll experiment.

At Footprint you can find a shoe for Rs. 11000, while Payless we're talking about a tight fashionable range of Rs. 500 to Rs. 2500. Most of the Payless stores are going to be between 1500 to 2000 sq ft.

There are collections every month. So there is something new all the time. And the shop is a far more promotional and fast changing environment. As a country America is far more promotional than India and Payless is a fairly energetic, vibrant and promotional brand. We hope to bring in all that with eight to ten promotions every year related to time, seasons, or festivals. It's all well organised.