Raymond is looking to sell its apparel retailing brands of ColorPlus and Park Avenue businesses, two persons familiar with the development said.
Raymond has held talks with Denmark-based retail group Bestseller to sell the ColorPlus business, but the talks failed without a deal, they said.
One of the persons quoted earlier said Raymond was seeking a valuation of about ₹500 crore for ColorPlus and Bestseller was not willing to shell out that much money for the business that owns about 90 standalone stores, apart from selling through other multi-brand outlets. For Park Avenue, that operates about 70 standalone stores, Raymond is seeking “much more” than ₹500 crore of valuation, he said.
Both Raymond and Bestseller declined to comment.
“As a policy we do not participate in any market speculation and having said that, whenever we have any information to share, we will,” Vineet Gautam, CEO of Bestseller India, said in WhatsApp message.
“As company policy, we do not comment on market speculations,” a spokesperson for Raymond chimed.
Last year, Raymond was in the news for laying off more than 1,000 of its employees amid a stinging pandemic that has hit the company like most of the retailers and manufacturers in India since early 2020.
Legacy Indian brands like ColorPlus and Park Avenue have been facing stiff competition in the last five-ten years from global fashion bigwigs of Spain’s Zara, Sweden-based H&M and Japan’s Uniqlo among a host of other global labels. On the other hand, the emergence of ecommerce platforms have intensified competitions even in tier-2 and tier-3 cities.
Raymond has business interests from manufacturing, fast moving consumer goods (FMCG), real estate and retail is a major part of the nearly century-old group founded in 1925. Bestseller sells its fashion and lifestyle products in 46 countries through more than 2,800 chain stores and 12,000 external multi-brand stores.
In India, Bestseller sells the five brands including Jack & Jones, Vero Moda, Only, Selected Homme and Produkt through 375 exclusive brand outlets and more than 1,200 shop-in-shops. Raymond’s ready-to-wear business, ColorPlus, Park Avenue and casual clothing label Parx, are among the “four power brands” of the Mumbai-based group.
