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JAKARTA. Publicly listed garment manufacturer and fashion retailer PT Trisula International plans to acquire a distribution company this year in an attempt to strengthen its access to the domestic market.
“We are still in a serious discussion with a distribution company that has a wide distribution network across the country,” Trisula president director Lisa Tjahjadi said on Monday.
There has been no agreed investment value for the acquisition yet, but it would probably amount to around Rp 50 billion (US$3.9 million), she said.
If everything goes smoothly, Trisula plans to carry out a corporate action sometime next year to reap fresh funds for the acquisition, Lisa told reporters.
The growth will be of a great importance for Trisula, which aims to increase its points of sale in a bid to profit more from the growing domestic market.
Apart from the acquisition plan, the company aims to end this year with a total of 310 points of sale, an increase from 297 last year.
Trisula aims to enlarge contributions from the domestic market to around 25 percent of its targeted revenues this year, bigger than the 21 percent of last year’s revenues.
Lisa disclosed that her company would allocate between Rp 10 and Rp 15 billion this year to carry out aggressive product promotions and expand the number of its points of sale.
Trisula currently holds licenses to market various clothing brands, including Jobb, Jack Nicklaus, UniAsia, ManClub, G2000 and Bonds, with the global market accounting for 79 percent of the company’s total revenues of Rp 746.8 billion last year.
Trisula international sales director Kartono Budiman said that his firm was currently facing fierce competition from garment manufacturers in Vietnam and Bangladesh in the US market, which made up 28 percent of the firm’s total revenues last year.
Lisa said that she remained optimistic over the outlook for her company’s business in the domestic market this year as the number of the country’s middle-class consumers kept increasing.
Trisula had also invested around Rp 1.2 billion for setting up an e-commerce system for a number of its brands and advertising online to tap deeper into the country’s fast growing e-commerce market, she said.
“In the long run, we want to spend around Rp 5 billion for e-commerce and advertisement,” Lisa said.
Trisula aimed to book a 14 percent increase in its net sales toRp 851.4 billion this year from Rp 746.83 billion last year and a 15 percent increase in its net profits.
Trisula saw its net profits dip by around 30.9 percent to Rp 24.42 billion last year from Rp 35.39 billion in 2013.
The company attributed the slump in profits to the fall of the rupiah against the US dollar and the floods in Greater Jakarta, which squeezed the firm’s revenues last year.
Around 60 percent of Trisula’s points of sale were located in Jakarta and up to 70 percent of the company’s raw materials were imported, Lisa said.
Lisa said that her firm had raised its selling prices by around 8 percent last year to adjust to the increase of US prices.
Trisula’s shares, which are traded on the bourse under the code TRIS, remained unchanged from the previous closing at Rp 359 apiece on Monday’s close. (Khoirul Amin)
