with uh that let's move ahead the second half of fi25 will be very strong that's the word coming in from Metro brand CFO kosel parik despite a year of muted consumer demand the company remains quite optimistic on the way ahead in an exclusive conversation with our colleague Shilpa ranip on the sidelines of the raai retail CFO Summit he added that the company has big plans for the sports and at leisure segment take a look as we guided in our earnings call you know we have seen uh uh overall customer sentiment sort of uh you know
uh coming back in fact for us even in q1 um uh products above 3,000 rupees which we classify as premium we saw the percentage of that increasing from 49% to 54% so that undercurrent in terms of customer shopping behavior is there uh we strongly feel H2 would be very strong for this financial year and that's how for the year as a whole you know we should hit that 12 and 12 to 15% overall sales G I think casualization was the biggest Trend that came out of uh covid as as well so currently uh is that
going to is that Metro's main focus uh and Brands like Fila are they going to be the grow drivers and if you could sort of maybe give me a figure or put some number to it as to how big do you see these Brands being say maybe by the the end of fi25 uh see if you if you see our overall brand portfolio you know we have like seven Brands now uh Metro moochi walkway these are our own Brands uh then we have tie ups with International companies like Crocs and fit plob and both these
brands have been doing exceptionally well uh our latest acquisition was Fela that was in uh 23 and then uh we uh tied up with Foot Locker which is a multi multibrand Sports and E leisure Outlet so the these are the recent ones uh obviously our Endeavor would be to make sure that all our existing format uh grow and we see a huge amount of growth opportunity across all our brand format so obviously that is something that we would not want uh uh to let go by uh so that is something that we would be completely
focusing on as I said Sports and atleisure we feel is is is going to be a a huge um Market uh going forward from here on you touched upon casualization right uh 10 years back Metro uh was broadly a black and brown formal company and today uh casual uh Plus Sports contributes to more than 60% of whatever we sell so obviously we we always uh uh follow what customer wants and that is where we sort of migrate to uh so uh uh so so we'll keep keep working on all our format and keep growing them
and sports and aure is something uh which we want to set it right for the kind of opportunity that we see uh going forward uh so to answer your question obviously uh Sports and athl uh Sports and AIA both Fila Foot Locker will uh uh uh will start growing from uh H2 and f26 onwards but along with that other formats would also grow so for this formats to become substantial it would take some amount of time because I because we expect all our formats to grow significantly from here on you know in last question with
respect to store expansion generally retailers we saw in the last couple of quarters given the Slowdown there was a lot of store rationalization that was happening it always happens I agree but then more than usual given the Slowdown and uh while there is store expansion the pace of expansion has slowed down is uh Metro looking at store expansion that way or are you going to continue to go aggress and given your focus on the value format also will most of that happen in tier 2 tier 3 markets uh see uh whenever we sign a store
we sign it for longterm right uh it's not for one quarter or a year it is predominantly for 7 to 9 years to sort of come so uh we are uh very cautious when uh whenever we see Euphoria and the market uh we have been existing since more than 65 years now now so whenever there is eupa in the market we would slow down because you can't sign deals which will come and bite you uh maybe two years down the line because these are long-term tenure leases at the same time when there is overall pessimism
in the market uh Metro would be most aggressive among the lot so that has been our philosophy over the years uh having said that we opened 15 stores uh in q1 uh we have guided for uh 225 soures over next two Financial years excluding any new stores that we open for Fela uh we feel extremely uh comfortable and confident of achieving that numbers uh for this financial year our Target would be to touch or exceed 100 stores uh and as as as I said right 225 for next two Financial years so logically for next year
we would Target somewhere around 125 yeah and what about for Fila what's the store plan there uh Fila we had clearly defined our strategy uh because you know when you when you take uh uh when you do any acquisition uh you have to work over cleansing and getting the integration done properly right so uh as we had defined fi 24 was the year of liquidation fi25 was the year when we want to reset the brand uh in India and we plan to predominantly do that by placing Fila within our nbos and eventually Foot Locker which
we hope to come in H2 of this financial year uh once we start seeing green shoots in terms of customer accepting our merchandise at the price at which it is offered uh we would uh uh think of opening uh exclusive brand outlet for Fila which most probably should happen in f26 interesting one well
