Aditya Birla Fashions buys India rights for Reebok

Aditya Birla Fashions Ltd has made some interesting acquisitions in the past. After Indian Rayon bought the premium Louis Phillippe and Van Heusen brands from Madura Coats, these were turned into Aditya Birla Fashions. Over the last few months, there has been a lot of action in the high street fashion space with Aditya Birla Fashions getting into purchase deals with premium fashion brands Sabyasachi and Tarun Tahiliani.

However, what was missing in the Aditya Birla Fashions portfolio was a strong presence in the lucrative sportswear and sports footwear arena. Now that gap has been filled as the Aditya Birla group has acquired the India distribution and manufacturing rights for Reebok sports brand. Reebok ranks along with Nike, Adidas and Puma among the premium sports brands across the world.

Aditya Birla Fashions has acquired the rights to manufacture and distribute Reebok products in India from its new owner, Authentic Brands group. Incidentally, Reebok was bought by Authentic Brands from Adidas for $2.5 billion. This will give the much needed front for Aditya Birla Fashions to establish its strong presence in the sports footwear and the sportswear segment. 

As part of the deal, Aditya Birla Fashions will also get the Reebok network of stores nationwide, which is most likely to be complementary with the existing all-India network of Aditya Birla group. This deal gives the Aditya Birla group a powerful entry point into the fast growing sportswear and athleisure market in India.

The sports wear market in India is seeing rapid growth for a number of reasons. India currently has the demographic dividend of having one of the youngest population age groups in the world. This group is a lot more inclined towards active participation in sports as well as prefers a choice of apparel that is trendy, sporty and casual.

But the bigger trend that ABFRL would look to play through this acquisition is the post-pandemic growth in health consciousness. Increasingly, people in India are also realizing the importance of an active lifestyle and the Reebok deal fits into this thought process. Above all, now ABFRL has a complete portfolio suite comprising of formal wear, ethnic wear, weekend wear, casual wear and now even sportswear.