That Soft Toy Is A Giant

In Hamleys And Its Teddy Bears And Minions, Reliance Has A Retail Business That Is Expanding Rapidly.

- T. Surendar

THERE ’S A NEW ROYAL BABY IN BRITAIN, and chances are, he’ll grow up playing with Hamleys toys. The royal family, it is said, are loyal customers of this centuries-old British brand. But, like most kids, the royal one too is likely to break his toys, howl for a couple of minutes, and move on to the next, brighter, shinier one. That’s the way it goes, and that’s why toy makers and sellers are likely to always have a market.

Yet, the business of selling toys is often overlooked. Take India’s largest retailer, Reliance Retail. It is mostly identified with its apparel stores, electronics outlets, and supermarkets. But besides these big-ticket businesses, Reliance—whose retail businesses reported a combined annual revenue of Rs 33,765 crore last financial year—under a franchise agreement, operates in India the toy stores of Hamleys. If the number of new stores is a marker, it is a business that is doing well. Early this year, the Reliance opened the 50th Hamleys store in India—in Amritsar. There were only two five years ago; in fact, the number of Hamleys stores in India has doubled in the last 15 months.

Darshan Mehta, CEO of Reliance Brands, says it is only the beginning of an aggressive expansion—he foresees 100 Hamleys stores in India by 2020. “We feel that we have perfected a business model that was so far lacking in the toys business,” says Mehta. Reliance Brands is a subset of Reliance’s retail businesses under which single-branded outlets such as Hamleys operate. Reliance also runs the India stores of Marks & Spencer, Superdry, and MUJI, among others.

Hamleys’ expansion seems logical if one were to look at India’s population. The last census put the number of children under the age of 11 at just under 300 million. And by all estimates, it is a country that is growing younger.