• PAGE ONE
• INDEX
• HOME

Mirza Tanners plans US foray by July

K.R. Srivats

NEW DELHI, April 22

MIRZA Tanners Ltd (MTL), a leading shoe exporter, said that it would step up efforts to take its flagship brand `Red Tape' to the US markets by July.

``We plan to sell at least 0.5 million pairs of Red Tape, a premium category range of casual and semi-formal shoes, and Oaktrak, formal shoes for the premium segment, in the US markets during fiscal 2000-01,'' Mr. Rashid Mirza, Joint Managing Director, M TL, told Business Line here.

He said the plans to enter the US markets from July were part of the overall strategy to ``grow big'' in that region.

MTL is expected to close fiscal 1999-2000 with a total income of around Rs. 125 crores, a 24 per cent increase over last year's Rs. 101 crores.

The company would be in a position to gain a toe-hold in the US markets in the coming years as it plans to come up with another unit, over the next 2-3 years, which would augment its installed capacity for shoes by another four million pairs per annum, h e said.

Meanwhile, MTL has, along with a number of domestic companies, run into domain name trouble, with a cybersquatter demanding a ``hefty sum'' for allowing the company to register its domain name as `Red Tape'.

Negotiations were on with this cybersquatter for arriving at a reasonable amount to solve this problem. ``If the negotiations fail, we may have to settle for the domain name of `Redtapeshoes','' Mr. Mirza said.

On the issue of competition from counterfeits, he admitted that this issue continued to be a "problem area" even though it had copyright protection for `Red Tape' and preferred legal action against copyright infringements.