Famed as India’s trendy departmental store chain, Westside recently launched a new store in the city of Kolkata at Pataka House, Park Street Area. The Westside format is operated by Tata Group’s retailing arm Trent Limited, notably.
“We are delighted to launch Westside’s 4th store in Kolkata and our 126th store in India. With this store, we aim to position Westside as a leading fashion destination in Kolkata and endeavour to provide an unmatched shopping experience to all our customers,’’ stated Trent Managing Director Phillip Auld at the store launch.
Significantly, Westside predominantly offers exclusive brands across womenswear, menswear, kidswear, footwear, lingerie, cosmetics, perfumes and handbags, household furniture and accessories.
The new store, built in a modern setting, also stocks the widest range of contemporary apparel, footwear, cosmetics and so more – all under one roof, for the fashionable patrons of Kolkata. Spanning over 30,000 sq. ft., this is also Westside’s largest store in the city of joy.
Moving ahead, Westside is now aggressively stepping up its pan-India retail play. This was made known by the Trent Chief during a press meet later.
“We will open 30 Westside stores this year of which 10 would be in the East. Last year, the number was 18. In the next 3-5 years, we will open at least 30 stores a year,” Phillip Auld told.
Furthermore, he also elaborated that the new stores would be evenly distributed between metros and tier-II cities and the envisaged expansion will comprise franchisee outlets as well. Currently, Westside has about 30-40 franchised stores in its 126-store network.
Markedly, Westside, Trent’s flagship store, contributes nearly 90 per cent to the standalone revenue of Trent. And interestingly, business-wise, FY 2018 has been a mixed bag for the company.
While Trent’s standalone net profit of Rs. 11.66 crores in the fourth quarter of FY 2018 was down from Rs. 25.26 crores in the same quarter the previous year, it reported Rs. 528.72 crores in Q4 standalone revenue from operations, significantly up from Rs. 448.36 crores for the same period of FY 2017.