Myntra.com, one of the country's largest online fashion retailer, is close to signing up two sub-franchisees to manage Mango stores in India, according to sources.
Myntra, which took over the offline and online franchisee rights for the Spanish fashion and lifestyle brand in India earlier this year, is likely to appoint Samarth Lifestyle and G&B Fashion as the subfranchisees.
Myntra has decided not to run the Mango stores itself, at least in the initial stages, due to high capital expenditure, operational costs and the need to maintain a separate team for offline stores, the people said.
A Myntra spokesperson, said, "We have not inherited any stores from the earlier franchisees as we did not find a feasible way to work with them. We will be setting up new Mango stores in prime locations in all metros and are working with our franchisees and malls to determine the location of these new stores."
One person said Myntra’s decision to let franchisees operate the Mango stores stems from the fact that its own entry into brick-andmortar retail a month ago with a Roadster-branded store has so far received a lukewarm response in Bengaluru, which the company said wasn’t correct.
Myntra said, "This is absolutely baseless. While the Roadster store has been launched to create experiences for customers, it has been very well received and has performed beyond our expectations. We have seen over 4,500 footfalls in the first month itself which is 2X of the footfalls of other leading brands on the street, with 60 per cent of the shoppers being new customer acquisitions."
