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By Nandita Bose
MUMBAI, Nov 11 (Reuters) - British retailer Marks & Spenceris looking overseas to try to stem a steady decline in clothingsales, focusing on India to replicate a move towards morestylish fashions that has failed to convince consumers at home.
Britain's biggest clothing retailer said on Mondayit planned to make India its biggest foreign market, increasingits store count there to 80 by 2016 from 36 currently.
"Three years ago our strategy changed and we identifiedIndia as a priority market and with our joint venture partnerhere we are confident of achieving this target," Chief ExecutiveMarc Bolland told reporters at the launch of a new flagshipstore in Mumbai.
Bollard, who joined the firm in 2010 and has built arecovery plan around higher quality and more stylish fashions,has come under increasing pressure from investors as the group'sclothing sales have fallen.
They dropped for the ninth quarter running in the threemonths to September, while profits in the first half of itsfinancial year shrank 9 percent.
To succeed in India's apparel market - worth an estimated$38 billion a year - M&S has to take on the world's biggestfashion retailer Inditex SA and its Zara brand.
According to its latest regulatory filings, M&S has failed to turn a profit in India since 2009. In the year to March 2012,Marks & Spencer Reliance Retail Ltd reported a net loss of 25.95million rupees ($413,700).
Over the same period Inditex Trent Retail India Ltd - whichentered the Indian market as the retailer for Zara almost adecade after M&S launched its first stores there in 2000 -reported profit of 383 million rupees over the same period.
"Since they entered, Marks & Spencer has had one issue andthat is getting their positioning right," said Harminder Sahani,managing director of retail consultancy Wazir Advisors.
"They are now trying to become hot and happening and that isa very competitive segment."
"The management acknowledges that a lot of time has gone bytrying to get India right," said an M&S consultant who declinedto be named as he is not authorised to speak to the media.
"But there is great hope in the M&S headquarters that Indiawill work with all the changes they are making."
M&S said sales rose 28 percent in India last year, decliningto give figures.
M&S initially joined with Indian franchise partner PlanetRetail, marketing itself as an exclusive, expensive brand.
When that strategy failed, it tried to sell itself as anaffordable, quality brand via the joint venture it stilloperates with Reliance Retail, a unit of billionaire MukeshAmbani's Reliance Industries.
M&S has expanded the size of its shops in India and broughtin more clothing ranges.
Retail consultant Sahani said M&S would benefit fromemphasising its value-for-money image rather than its fashioncredentials.
