Miniso will spend $25 million on Indian sourcing, as it heads to an aggressive 2020

• Miniso, which entered India in 2017, offers value products for low prices.
• In an interview with Business Insider, Tyrone Li, Miniso India head, said that the company will move its cosmetics and textile purchasing and manufacturing to India.
• Miniso currently has 110 stores in India across Tier 1 and 2 cities.

There’s a reason why Japanese value retailer brand Miniso attained instant popularity after its launch in 2017. It offered good quality products at affordable prices.

Two years since, Miniso has bigger plans in the India market, and wants to increase local sourcing.

“By this year end, we will hit $3 million purchase from India and by the next year, we hope to purchase goods worth $25 million from here. We want to buy and manufacture products in India, followed by a design finish in Europe and Japan and then export to different countries,” Tyrone Li, Miniso India head told Business Insider.

Miniso currently purchases products from 40 countries but has also been witnessing supply chain pressures. It now wants to shift purchase orders to India for cosmetics and textiles.

“In the past few years, Made in India has taken off India and now it is the second biggest purchase country for Miniso sales arms, the first being China,” said Li.

Products made in India are already exported to Indonesia, Malaysia and China.

Retail expansion

Miniso currently has 110 stores in India in Tier 1 and 2 cities. By next year, it hopes to have over 160 stores. But it has also tried a different model – the online space.

The Japanese retailer has already partnered with Shopclues, Paytm and Snapdeal to offer its products online. Though 99% of its sales come from its stores, Li wants to explore and learn from the Indian online market.

“If we aren’t touching the online space, we are not touching the whole market. We try to understand why people opt for online and are learning from the Indian ecosystem,” said Li.

Miniso wants to slow down, before growing fast

In spite of its success, Miniso is far from touching its initial objective of opening 800 stores by 2020. Li explains that while their first year in India was aggressive, they have now slowed down to prepare for the next wave of fast growth.

That’s also because they have to customize for the Indian market.

“Something as simple as nailpolish. In different countries, they want easy to remove nail paints but here it’s not like that. Then when it comes to cosmetics, India has so many different skin colours and are products need to serve all of them, so we moved to a local manufacturer,” said Li.

With over 3,000 products on offer, Miniso is not worried about competition either. It has been partnering with different brands – it recently launched the official Marvel collection in India – and also aims to push its IP products.

Currently, India contributes to 3-4% of their global sales, but Li says their aim is for it to be at least 9%.