‘I want to bring a bit more Cha Cha Cha into our stores’

Bata, recently opened its 1,101{+s}{+t} store in India, in Bengaluru’s high street, Brigade Road, its largest flagship store in South India spread over 10,000 sq ft offering 2,000 styles. BusinessLine caught up with Bata Global CEO, Alexis Nasard, who was in the city to inaugurate the store to find out about his plans for the brand in the India market. Excerpts.

Does India, where Bata has been present for over 84 years, feature among your top markets?

India, Italy and Chile are our top three markets. India is our number one market in terms of our existing business and potential business. When you look at the progression of India’s population, the proportion of people who are entering the middle-class and if you look at the sheer breadth of our offerings in shoes and our price points, the probability that India will continue to be our top market is very high. India will always be a top priority in terms of capital investments and from an operational standpoint for us.

Bata has lost its former glory to other multinational shoe brands like Nike, Reebok, Adidas, especially in athletic shoes and school shoes. How do you plan to restore that?

Bata is a very successful brand in India and continues to be so. While we are known for our comfortable footwear, the need now is to keep rejuvenating our consumers with new design-inspired styles which are cool, chic and aspirational, while still being affordable to our young consumers. We are committed to being a design-driven shoe brand offering new styles every month in our bigger, flagship stores and will be talking to our consumers a lot more than we did before. Our brand is all about ‘Surprising Affordability’ and it’s a brand which is talking to consumers who have grown up with Bata over the years. While we want to stick to that consumer, we are also looking to recruit younger consumers into our line up today, because, as you rightly pointed out, the youth have a lot of temptations in the market in the athletic footwear and school footwear categories.

What are the categories in India where you see growth opportunities?

In the last three days, I have visited 20 of our stores and find that trendy sandals and ballerinas for women are doing great business. Shoes for weddings and holidays, where we do not have a significant presence, but, where we are doing very well right now, is a big growth category in India, and is an area where we can differentiate ourselves with design. Bata shoes can be elegant and comfortable. I refuse to accept the notion that these are mutually exclusive propositions. And the nugget we will crack in India and have already started the process is to convince and show women through our products, that it is possible.

Bata, in India, is perceived as a family brand, who is your core customer?

We make shoes for men, women, children and also offer athletic wear. However, women consumers dominate globally. Our core customers are young people between 30 and 40 years in Europe. In India, it would be 25-35 years because of the age of the population, who are relatively trendy and who have aspirations for styling themselves. We want to be the shopping moment for the young female consumer, which is what I call in French a ‘Moi’ moment or “Me time.’ One of the key insights we discovered when we talked to young female consumers is that one of her biggest frustrations is that she doesn’t have time for herself because of family constraints, her job, children, it’s not easy. We want to be the retail brand where she spends a little bit of that Moi time.

What is your vision for the India market and what innovations are your introducing?

We have clear revenue targets for India which are ambitious, but achievable. We want to create a retail and brand proposition that will put a smile on our customers faces in India. While innovations have been the preserve mostly of athletic footwear, we are introducing innovations in daily wear, formal wear and casual wear.

The innovations are in the areas of flexibility - when you walk a lot the sole cannot be rigid.

Second area is, shock absorbability, which makes a big difference to comfort levels, and third, high heels that are both comfortable and stylish, which we achieve by rebalancing the weight that the woman has on her shoes. This is just a sneak preview. There’s a lot more coming. I want to bring a bit more Cha Cha Cha into our stores.

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