Landmark Group, the retail giant of the Middle East, has planned to shut down stores of its fast fashion brand Splash in India.
The Group currently operates stores like Max, Lifestyle, Home Centre and Splash in India with 18 outlets belonging to Splash, a fast fashion brand highly popular in the Middle East.
Splash has not been able to find footing in the country owing to competition from other major brands like H&M and Zara.
“As a brand, Splash never really took off in India because of its slightly premium pricing. In that space, it had to compete with several established brands. Currently, affordable fashion brands are doing well for most retailers as a large majority of Indian consumers are following global fashion trends but are unable to spend big bucks at the store. That’s the reason Landmark has turned its attention to brands such as EasyBuy, which has a cheaper price tag,” commented a senior industry executive.
To cater to the Indian market which is becoming increasingly price-conscious, Tata Trent, a partner of Zara in India, has also decided to open hundreds of stores that will sell extremely affordable fast fashion at half the price of Zara. [Read our story: Tata Group to build cheaper fashion brand to compete with Zara]
Landmark Group has also made changes in its strategy to be able to provide the Indian customers what they need.
“For strategic reasons, Landmark Group has decided to focus on its power retail brands such as Lifestyle, Max, Home Centre and emerging concept EasyBuy each of which is a leader in its segment. In view of the power brands focus, we have decided to restrict Splash operations to specific regions and online channel only. Consequently, most of the Splash employees have been absorbed in other Landmark Group companies,” said Vasanth Kumar, MD, Lifestyle International.