Danish brand Hummel enters India

Danish sports lifestyle brand Hummel International has entered the Indian retail market. The company opened five franchise stores in Bengaluru, Pune, Chennai, Surat and Amritsar. Hummel will invest $5.5 million (Rs 38.5 crore) in its first year of operations in India and open 10 more stores in the current fiscal year. The company is investing $5.5 million in the first year towards warehousing, logistics, back-end operations and marketing. The search is on for store locations in malls in Mumbai and Delhi and the company is also identifying locations in Hyderabad, Lucknow and Ludhiana to set up stores. Hummel's mall stores are planned to be 800-900 sq ft in carpet area and its high-street stores will be over 1,500 sq ft. With over 95 years of heritage in sportswear and lifestyle, Hummel is one of the oldest, team sports brand in the business and introduced football cleats way back in the 1920s. Owned by the Danish Thornico Group, Hummel is currently present in over 35 countries, has over 250 mono-brand stores and expects to end this calendar year with $1.5 billion in turnover.