HRX targets Rs 300-crore revenue in FY20, will spend heavily on digital and influencer marketing

HRX India, the home-grown fitness and accessories brand, is going on a major expansion-spree. The brand plans to get into offline retail, expand in the overseas market and look for categories beyond fitness and athleisure wear for growth. 

The brand, which is growing at a pace of 80% annually, expects to see a revenue growth of Rs300 crore in FY 19-20.

Hrithik and Exceed Entertainment together own 49% in HRX while e-tailer Myntra owns the remaining 51%. In India, HRX retails primarily on Flipkart and its other entities, including Myntra and Jabong. The portfolio mostly includes apparels, footwear, accessories and inner-wear.

To achieve the Rs 300-crore revenue target, HRX is spending heavily on digital marketing, influencer and sponsorship marketing — the three best mediums to increase consumer engagement and brand visibility.

“We spend largely on digital marketing and then on ATL activities, the allocations are 40-50% on digital, 10% on TV, 20% on-ground activations and 20% ATL activities. We are also looking forward to spend majorly on influencer marketing,” said Afsar Zaidi, Co-Founder and CEO, HRX India.

According to Zaidi, influencer marketing educates consumers about the details of the products and services a brand offers. The company sees Diva Dhavan and Gabriella D as the epitome of fitness and plans to continue its association with them as faces of brand campaigns.

Apart from digital marketing, the brand spends on intra-level sports and fitness events, to encourage the idea of staying fit, healthy and sporty as well as to create the brand’s goodwill and visibility.

According to Zaidi, the focus of HRX is to create multiple communities across various sports. “We are creating these communities where we sponsor football, volleyball teams and marathons. This is one marketing initiative we follow and will be following in the upcoming years.”

The brand has communities across the country. At present, the brand has the Bombay-running community in Mumbai and Pune, and the Bangalore-running community in Bengaluru.

“In Bombay, we sponsor two football teams at an intercity level. In Gurugram, we are a part of football team, in Lucknow we are organising marathons,’’ said Zaidi.

Speaking on the marketing of HRX, Zaidi, said, “The marketing model of HRX is connected with its partner brands cult.fit, Myntra and Xiaomi. The marketing plans and budget are directly proportional to the business need of these brands. We work as per the requirement of the partner brand. Three to five per cent of the targeted revenue of the company is spent on advertising and marketing activities.

“We will soon launch the new TVC of HRX. There are also a lot of ground activities that we have planned with cult.fit in Mumbai, to connect with consumers at the ground level.  We are soon going to launch HRX workout 2.0 in the market,” Zaidi pointed out.

Speaking on the tie-up with cult.fit and Xiaomi, Zaidi, said, “The tie-up with cult.fit was with the vision to create a well-connected health care ecosystem. We have an equity partnership model with cult.fit; with Xiaomi we have a licence deal, where we co-branded the Mi fitness bands to Mi-HRX bands. The association has been profitable and exciting for HRX. Connecting with both cult.fit and Xiaomi is a reason to develop a complete ecosystem of fitness in the country.”

“Wherever the brand ideology matches with a robust business model, we will keep evaluating such co-branded deals,” he added.

HRX is looking at international markets for growth. The company is eyeing Canada, North America, the UAE, the UK and other European nations.

Not limiting itself to a fitness brand, HRX has now partnered with a merchandise brand ‘CelfiDesign’, where the brand products will have a logo of HRX. Through this partnership, HRX will have access to CelfiDesign products such as mobile accessories, T-shirts, coffee mugs and office stationeries among others. With this partnership, the brand aims to expand its reach to its consumer.

According to Zaidi, “There has been a lot of change in consumer behaviour today. Now, people are more aware of the type of dressing while going to the gym or while doing any other physical activity. The preference of dressing has changed. This is one huge change that has happened in the consumers, which shows in our numbers too. Today, people buy variety of sportswear on the basis of the activity they perform. A big infrastructural change has also taken place in the last couple of years where we have seen gym chains expanding everywhere, which was not significant some time ago. The current government’s awareness and activities on physical fitness has also helped the mindset of many to stay fit.”

For the brand, its TG is not limited to a particular age group. The product offerings are for everyone. “Fitness is not limited to any age group as our products; we target all the age groups,” Zaidi added.

Speaking on the partnership model of HRX-Myntra and Hrithik Roshan and Exceed Entertainment, Zaidi, said, “HRX as a brand is owned by Hrithik Roshan and Exceed Entertainment, Myntra owns 51% of the fashion vertical of HRX. With Myntra, we have a tie-up in the fashion space where we have shoes, casual wear, athlete wear, sunglasses, fitness wear, bag packs. There are many more categories that we will launch shortly in this space.”

The brand is all set to launch its innerwear segment next month and plans to add more new segments of products by the end of 2019.

Speaking on the offline expansion, Zaidi, said, “The offline expansion of HRX is completely driven by Myntra; they will take a call on that aspect at the right time. However, the first city to open HRX’s offline store will be Bangalore as Myntra has its HQ there. The company is further looking to expand offline in Pune and Gurugram.”

According to Zaidi, the Myntra platform of HRX is growing 100% every year, which is directly proportional to HRX growth. “We are the number one brand in the sports unit on Myntra, in the categories of T-shirts, tights and jackets.”

Info@BestMediaInfo.com