BrandCo Nigeria Limited, a fashion retailer that sells relevant high street brands to urban African customers through retail expression called bCODE, the company recently acquired and launched Adidas in Lagos and Abuja.
bCODE is a wellness fashion and lifestyle multi-brand retailer that sells apparels, accessories and footwear by Adidas, Skechers and Havaianas.
The company’s CEO, Wonuola Okoye, revealed that the company would continue to go into franchise with other local and international brands within the athleisure genre over the next few months
Speaking more on the franchise, she said the company had its “Original flagship brand, as Skechers, then Havaianas and now, we have just launched Adidas.”
“Essentially, we are the go-to brand for athleisure and for sports. So we deal in all types of products, whether it’s footwear or apparel. We are the go-to brand in that space, and we are definitely making a statement.”
“So far we have 14 stores across Nigeria and West Africa. These include the ones we just launched this week. We plan to launch across pan-Africa, so we are looking into other countries like Senegal, Cameroon etc.”
“But right now, we are very excited about Adidas because it is the third largest revenue generating sports business in the world, second to Skechers. That means two of the top three sports brands in the world are in our possession, as we are the franchise owners for these businesses in this region.
We have launched Adidas in two major states in Nigeria, one in Ikeja City Mall, Lagos and the other at Jabi Lake Mall, Abuja.”
“We have a couple more stores set to be ready by the end of the year or early next year within Nigeria, some on the island, the northern parts of Nigeria and several parts of Port-Harcourt.”
Okoye likewise took time to give clarity on BrandCo as a brand as different from bCODE which she referred to as the ‘retail identity’.
According to her, “It is also very important for us to differentiate between BrandCo and What the bCODE is. BrandCo is essentially our retail business corporate identity. It is like the holding company for anybody whom we are having our franchise agreement with.”
“bCODE is our retail identity. This is how we are doing retail online via our website, www.shopbcode.com , our digital platforms and just generally engaging with customers.”
She added that the aim of the company remains to “continue to provide very good prices in the mid range. It’s not luxury, we are very proud to be operating in the middle range, because we want it to be affordable for all.”
“We launched our first bCODE multi brand outlet called codeRED at the Festival Mall, just in December. The idea is to have another platform where we can actually distribute our off season merchandise at lower priced items. What we do is to clothe people and empower them to be the best they can be, using apparel and footwear,” she said.