Croma Eyes 40 Percent Growth in Private Label Sales

Croma, the Tata Group's electronics retail chain Croma today said it is eyeing a near 40 percent growth in its private labels sales with a revenue of Rs. 250 crore by the end of the current fiscal.

"This year our private labels should be close to Rs. 250 crore, up from Rs. 180 crore last year," Infiniti Retail MD and CEO Ajit Joshi told PTI in Mumbai.

Currently, private labels contribute 6-7 percent of the turnover of Croma, which stood at Rs. 3,200 crore last year. Meanwhile, Croma on Tuesday entered into a strategic partnership with online marketplace Snapdeal.com to sell a range of products online under which Snapdeal would create Croma's flagship store on its portal to sell electronics items including mobiles, tablets and laptops.

However, Joshi said it would not be selling its private labels through this tie-up. "Currently, we are talking about branded products because there is logistics involved.

"Snapdeal has got a fantastic reach in small towns, which will help me serve those customer segment. As we gain confidence, as we may move forward and look at putting those products online as well," he said.

Croma had launched its online store cromaretail.com 2 years ago and Joshi said the operation is profitable now.

"Almost Rs. 1.5 to Rs. 2 crore is the turnover that we achieve on weekly basis and that is operationally profitable now. We are serving in over 300 cities and towns, 6,000 pincodes, we are serving to a large audience but Snapdeal would help us to reach out to far more numbers," he said.

Launched in October 2006, Croma has 96 outlets across 16 major cities and sells over 6,000 products. It plans to take its store count to at least 105 by the year end.

"This year we will close at 105-106 stores. We closed down a few stores which were not profitable. Currently there are a couple of stores under development and we are trying to open that during the festive season," he said.