Versace Home opens first standalone store in capital

NEW DELHI - Versace Home, the home-furnishing line from the internationally acclaimed Italian brand, Monday opened its first standalone furnishing boutique here to tap the expanding Indian market for premium lifestyle goods.

Versace Home was launched in 1992 with a collection of bed sheets, pillows and cushions, and it was soon followed by porcelain dinner sets and high-end furniture with the trademark Versace logo.

We believe Indian market is ready for our home furnishing line. The collection is in tune with what you will get at any Versace store in the world. The values expressed in these designs is what the brand believes in, Gabriella Saracino, Versac’s Licensing director, told IANS.

The look, the quality and the finish of our hand-made product definitely stands out. One can easily touch, feel and make out the product is hand-crafted and exclusive for our consumers, she added.

Located in The Gallery Mall, entirely dedicated for the home furnishing stores, at MG Road, the store is spread over 300 square metres and is the first international brand to have a standalone store.

Versace is being retailed in India through Blues Clothing Company and now they too have extensively entered the home division line with Blues Home.

Blues Home is also retailing home furnisihing products from Thailand -based brand Jagtar, Fraench brand Haute Monde and a few others as well.

Versace pret collection has a store in the DLF Emporio mall, Vasant Kunj and it was there the bosses got a cue that Indian market is ready for the high-end interior line.

In the DLF mall, we had introduced a small section of the Versace Home line a year back and we received overwhelming response from the consumers. As the luxury market in India is growing at the rate of 30- 40 percent per year, we thought it is the best time, Dinesh Sehgal, managing director of Blues Clothing Company Ltd, said.

According to Abhay Gupta, executive director of Blues Clothing Company, a market survey has revealed that an average person spends around 20 percent on the interior of their house.

So if we go by the survey, people do want to make their house look good hence they don’t mind spending. So if we are giving them so many options under one roof, they can mix and match, he said.

For long, Indians have been deprived of a lot of things. The long wait for foreign return aunts and uncles is over. A person can now get world class international labels in India, so times are changing, aspirational values too are changing, he added.

As far as prices are concerned, a designer Versace vase can cost you Rs.8000 and the other products can range from Rs.10,000 to Rs.100,000 and above (1 dollar=45 rupees).