Myntra, the leading online fashion retailer in India, has won the rights to manage international fashion brand Esprit’s offline stores in India. The company will also sell its products exclusively on its online marketplace.
As per the agreement, Myntra will curate and facilitate 15 Esprit stores in the country over the next five years. No financial details related to this deal were revealed.
The announcement comes just months after the e-commerce firm bagged a similar deal from Spanish fashion brand Mango. As part of the deal, Myntra is managing 25-30 of Mango’s stores in India.
Commenting on this, Ananth Narayanan, CEO of Myntra, said,
We are very excited. This is a terrific partnership for us. We are going to be the master distributor both offline and online for Esprit in India—hopefully for a very long time. The reason for this partnership is very simple—as you know our strategy is really about courting brands and around how to build brands in India. We believe that Esprit can be grown into a large-scale brand.
Esprit has undertaken a massive overhaul of its business and revamped its strategy. As part of the revamp, the company has reviewed its operations, slashed operating costs by shutting down stores and also invested heavily in technology. And that strategy seems to be working as the company reported a threefold jump in its profits.
Guillaume Thery, general manager of the Asia Pacific operations of Esprit, said,
We realized that we needed to find an omni-channel solution in the countries where we operate directly. The fastest way to test a market is by testing the brand online and that’s when we met Myntra. That’s when we started discussions around phase 2 of the strategy. And Myntra is a very good partner to build a brand with.
The brand had previously forayed into India during the 2000s through a distribution agreement with Madura Fashion and Lifestyle. However, after several years of incurring heavy losses, the retailer exited India in 2012.