Indian Rayon buys out Coates Viyella brands

bangalore: indian rayon, an aditya birla group company, has acquired the world rights for louis philippe, allen solly (barring north america) and peter england (barring uk and ireland) from coates viyella, uk, at a cost of $2.26 million. till now, the company only had the rights to these menswear brands for south asia, including india, and the license to export to the west asia.the world rights have been acquired by aditya vikram global trading house, a fully-owned overseas subsidiary of indian rayon. coates viyella's decision to sell off its menswear brands follows its global restructuring programme under which it is increasingly focussing on its threads business. prakash nedungadi, president of madura garments (the division which markets the three brands and which indian rayon acquired a year ago), said the acquisition of the world rights significantly enhances indian rayon's potential and would enable the company to be a global player in menswear brands. nedungadi told the times of india that madura garments' global focus over the next one year would be on the middle east, where the company has already made significant investments in large garment retail stores. ``after that we'll look at the far east and africa. markets like the us are not growing particularly fast now, so we'll probably look at that only at a later stage,'' he said. asked whether the company would focus on any particular brand in the international market, nedungadi said the focus may vary depending on the specificities of a market. ``however, it is always useful to go into a market with a portfolio of brands,'' he said. madura garments contributed rs 164 crore, or about 25 per cent, to indian rayon's turnover of rs 683 crore in the first half of 2000-01.