Big C BIG push for house brands

Big C Supercentre is striking a chord with consumers by heavily promoting its own brands, particularly for clothing.

"We aim at increasing the ratio of housebrand products for our softline sales from 55 per cent currently to 80 per cent in three years," Jariya Chirathivat, vice president of marketing and communications, said yesterday.

The superstore chain carries six major house apparel brands under the "Only@Big C" umbrella.

"We also expect sales of our housebrand products to grow by at least 20 per cent a year. We have seen a huge market potential for housebrand products as nobody in the market is doing well in this business. The focus on house branding will be a crucial strategy in helping Big C to be different from our competitors in the market," she said.

Prices of Only@Big C products start from Bt49 for pants to Bt399 for jackets and sweaters.

The softline items account for about 15 per cent of sales. They are fastmoving items and will be stocked at the stores for no longer than two months.

"For the fourth quarter of the year, Big C will focus more on apparel products, as it is a market that is growing by 10 per cent. We'll highlight our 'amazing low price' strategy, particularly for our Only@Big C umbrella.

"The concept called 'Your style with lower prices' will be promot¬ed to build brand awareness while lessening the burden on consumers arising from the high cost of living," Jariya said.

Big C has been building brand awareness for Only@Big C through hosting fashion shows over the past years and has received positive feedback from customers in all seasons, she said.

Catalogues of the new collection will be distributed to individual customers. This will help Big C build up its brands while expanding its customer base.

"The 'Your style with lower prices' concept is a strategy to directly enter the market and reinforce Big C's position as a price leader. It will stimulate sales of Only@Big C products for men, women and kids. Sales should increase while the total sales of apparel products will grow over 20 per cent this year," Jariya said.

Big C has not revised its overall sales target for this year even though the economy is experiencing downward pressure.

"During the year, we have con¬tinually revised our marketing strategies to overcome some of the obstacles presented by weaker con¬sumer spending.

"We will continue to offer quality products that meet consumer demands and work with designers to produce high quality, fashionable products at the lowest prices available in the market.

"We do expect to reach our sales target for the year," she said.