Quick Summary:
Aretto, an Indian footwear retail brand known for shoes that expand with children's feet, announced to increase its store count from the current 70 to 100+ by 2027. Founded by Mr. Satyajit Mittal, the brand solves an age-old challenge: kids' feet grow, but shoe size remains static. Aretto has raised over 5 million USD in funding for the expansion. Aretto’s growth strategy shows how physical stores still matter in the footwear retail industry, even for a tech-first brand. The article highlights how other footwear retailers who aspire to expand their retail footprints similarly can manage multi-store complexity.

Aretto, an Indian footwear retailer, has announced its expansion plans to reach 100+ touchpoints by 2027. Known for the shoes that grow with children’s feet, Aretto is not an ordinary footwear brand. Aretto is a tech-dominated footwear retailer that has patented a sole system where shoes expand with children’s feet. Sounds unique, right? It solves an age-old problem that parents and kids face.

Children’s feet grow every month; the purchased shoe size remains static. Aretto found that one out of every three kids wore the wrong shoe size and suffered discomfort. With growing children’s feet, even the most well-maintained shoes had to be discarded or given to younger siblings. Many middle-class families often deliberately purchased a shoe size greater than the actual foot size of their children.

The founder of Aretto, Mr. Satyajit Mittal, has stated in an interview that he thought buying bigger shoes was an Indian thing only. However, when he spoke about this at a USA convention, he understood that it is a global thing. With his roots in industrial product design, he quickly got the idea that if he were able to design and manufacture a shoe that can expand, it would solve a global-scale problem.

This is why Aretto built a shoe brand engineered for expansion. Satyajit Mittal has stated that when they started Aretto, their objective was to solve the shoe size problem rather than merely creating another shoe brand. Surprisingly, for many years, all shoe brands ignored this global-scale issue.

From the oldest known shoe, Areni-1, that belongs to 5500 BC, to the rise of athletic shoes in the 20th century, seldom was any thought given to shoes’ size issues for kids. Aretto is therefore one of the few new-age brands that have thought out of the box. Aretto is an outlier in the very positive sense; the brand that has broken conventions for good.

No wonder this innovative footwear brand raised close to $5.27 million in funding so far. It reports an annual recurring revenue of ₹60 crore. These are strong numbers for a footwear brand still in its expansion phase. Their ambition to open 100+ stores by 2027 is not simple, especially when you are an unconventional retailer in the Indian market.

Indian retailers face their unique set of challenges—operational, tactical, and strategic. However, Aretto’s story is bigger and has implications for India’s entire footwear industry. It is a story that retailers can learn from and also understand the risks ahead for such ambitious goals. So, let’s break it down for our retailers.

Impact of Aretto’s Expansion on India’s Footwear Retail Segment

The very first thing Aretto’s expansion tells us about the retail industry is how a physical touchpoint (an offline store) is still very important even for brands that started online. D2C brands that once thought they could serve customers easily without a physical presence are changing their thoughts now.

These brands started online to save on operational costs and to pass the benefits to customers with cheaper products. However, now they are realizing that physical stores still matter a lot.

This is more relevant for an industry like footwear, where many still don’t buy online due to size-related complications. For years, D2C brands considered having a physical store optional and not mandatory. Online-first was the default strategy. Aretto’s move shows a strategic shift.

Omnichannel is the new expansion strategy and a path to create a relevant, sustainable, and scalable retail brand in India.

There are a few reasons behind this shift. Parents buying kids’ footwear want to check fit, comfort, and quality in person. A digital catalog can’t replace that.

Also, the thrill of going out with kids and personally attending the shopping scene is something that both parents and kids crave. Trust still lives in physical stores. Online-only brands often miss customers who prefer to walk into a store.

Physical expansion lets brands reach these buyers directly. This is the main reason why Aretto would have needed funding. The funding of $5.27 million for a footwear brand shows that investors are willing to bet on brands that combine technology, innovation, and a practical solution for their customers. Footwear retail in India is no longer just about big national chains only. Niche-specific, well-funded brands with a clear differentiation have the potential to scale faster in Indian markets.

How Can Other Footwear Retailers Expand Like Aretto?

All retailers dream of expanding their stores to multiple locations, cities, and states. However, most retailers are too much pre-occupied with handling the procurement, inventory, accounting, billing, customer relationships, and online/offline store workflows. Operational challenges are not limited to daily workflows but also include annual compliance of the store, periodic stock audits, GST filings, and many more.

When retailers haven’t implemented a reliable business management software that can handle all these business activities and workflows, they have no time even to think about expansion. Aretto’s growth from a single store to currently operating 70 stores, and soon 100+, is a story of sound business management, strategic thinking, and tech-oriented business operations. Retailers eyeing similar growth can take a few lessons from this playbook.

1. Create Your USP

Aretto’s expandable sole technology is the differentiator that eliminates almost all competition for the brand in a particular niche category. Any parent looking for expandable shoes has no other option but to buy Aretto shoes, as they have a patented technology. Pricing is not the only differentiator that can protect you in the market.

A strong USP gives a brand a reason to exist beyond price competition. Ask what makes your footwear brand or footwear store different. It could be comfort tech, design, pricing, or a niche audience.

2. Expand in Phases

Aretto didn’t open all stores at once. It started with one store in the first year; by the second year it had 30 stores, and in the third year the number increased to 65. It opened its 70th store at DLF Summit Mall in Gurugram. From 2020 till now, they have built all 70 stores in phases. Now, they have come up with their 100+ store expansion plan by 2027.

Such step-by-step expansions provide time to fix operational gaps in the first few stores. Once you get the system right, and all your stores operate in a particular rhythm, then opening new stores gets very easy. Next-phase expansions only need location research, as you already have a business management system completely operational.

3. Automate What You Can

Manual stock counts, manual billing, and manual inventory records are things of the past. No store that doesn’t automate these activities can scale in the current retail scenario. Free yourself and your teams by automating as much as you can. From billing to accounting and inventory management, today’s business management software has all the features, modules, and integrations needed to automate daily retail activities.

For instance, billing can be automated via smart POS and self-checkout systems, and CRM modules can take care of customer loyalty programs and memberships without your involvement.

4. Go Omnichannel With Centralized Management

Many retailers handle in-store inventory and online inventory separately. They keep it as separate operations. The reason is that they don’t have a system where both types can be managed centrally. Get omnichannel business software that can manage inventory, customers, accounting, and compliance related to both online/offline stores centrally.

This way you get visibility of both businesses centrally and can consider both as ‘one’. Omnichannel footwear business software makes it easier to transfer stocks from online to offline and vice versa.

5. Plan for Supply Chain Complexity

Supply chain management is a difficult part when it comes to multiple retail stores. Multiple locations, multiple cities, and multiple states can add more complexity. This is where you must have software that can make supply chain management easy, with features such as procurement management, supplier-product mapping, supplier management, inventory management, warehouse management, dispatch management, delivery management, and built-in features for barcode/label generation.

6. Integrate Artificial Intelligence that Understands Your Business

Tools for managing POS to accounting, inventory to CRM, and Compliance to Supply chains alone are not enough when your goals are multi-chain retail store operations. At such scale, while retail software provides complete visibility of all footwear stores on a centralized dashboard, no single person can watch every store’s data and sales trends at once.

This is where artificial intelligence embedded into your retail software can be a game changer. For years, D2C brands considered having a physical store optional and not mandatory. Online-first was the default strategy. Aretto’s move shows a strategic shift.

Meet vina: The Intelligence Layer in Your Footwear Software. vina is built into Vasy’s footwear store software as an intelligence layer, not a separate app. Rather than waiting for a store manager to notice a problem, vina works in the background across all your locations. It watches all stores together and provides the right answers in real-time. Just ask, and it will answer anything from which products you should stock in a particular store location to what your current best-selling category is.

The added AI layer in your retail software watches everything for you; it understands your business and provides you with answers in your own language. It can identify and detect an issue before it costs sales, keep track of patterns, and know what your business is and how you work. It’s your personal business assistant.

What Tools Do Footwear Retailers Need for Scaling Like Aretto?

Scaling from a handful of stores to multiple stores needs more than good products. It needs the right systems running behind the scenes. One Tool, One Software: All Modules Integrated

Wrapping Up:

Aretto’s expansion story is a preview of where Indian footwear retail is heading. Towards growth for brands that use tech at their behest, and ease their operations to focus more on product innovation and service. Whether you are planning to open your first store or the tenth, the maths remains the same.

A stable, scalable, and profitable footwear store business needs more than simple billing software; it needs smart footwear store software with AI integration that acts as the intelligence layer to guide at every challenge you face. Ready to scale like Aretto? Stop juggling stores manually. Let Vasy and vina run your footwear business smartly.