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India : ITC To Take Wills Lifestyle Abroad |
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2003-7-29 8:47:00
ITC Ltd is taking its Wills Lifestyle apparel brand abroad, having
already bought it in the US and Japan, and registered it in several other countries, even as it looks for sizeable acquisitions in businesses other than cigarettes, chairman YC Deveshwar said.
“Our vision is to exploit opportunities on a global scale,” Mr Deveshwar told reporters at an evening meet following the annual general meeting of shareholders earlier in the day.Over the past few years, the cigarettes major has made successful areas into a host of new areas apart from its older hotels and paperboard businesses. In one such move, it took the Wills cigarettes brand into branded upmarket apparel.
Mr Deveswar said it was extremely expensive to develop a brand into a global scale, and ITC did not want to let go of the Wills brand. In the US, Wills was a small garments brand.Following the increasing regulatory pressure on tobacco smoking and related advertising, ITC had thought it prudent to shift the Wills brand rather than let it die.
“We have taken that asset and are applying it in an area where we can go international with it,” he said. “So it is in the interest of our country”.He laughed away suggestions that ITC was resorting to surrogate advertising. ITC has already rolled out 48 Wills garments stores nationally, with six in Delhi alone.“It is only companies like ours who can actually make the Indian apparel industry competitive internationally — we are the ones who can build brands and take them overseas,” he said.Mr Deveshwar said ITC will be sure of every investment before it steps in.
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