Homegrown premium footwear and apparel brand Woodland has said it will diversify into skincare and foot-care products by early next year.

“We are talking to a German company called PNS to do a line of skincare and foot-care products for us. It is not cosmetic but skincare solutions. We will start test marketing early next year and will launch the products by September- October,” said Harkirat Singh, managing director, Woodland.

Singh, based in New Delhi, was here in eastern Maharashtra as part of his company’s CSR initiative to provide safe drinking water to villagers in association with Unicef. He said the products will be expensive, as they will be imported from Germany, including the packaging components.

Asked about the brand name, he said, “PNS has its own brand, but here it will be a sub-brand. It will be connected to Woodland but will be named according to the product line.”

The products like body lotions, sunscreen lotions, massage oils, face washes, will be initially sold through the company’s 350 outlets and then via retail stores like Shoppers Stop, Reliance Trends and Lifestyle, Singh said. “We are not in a hurry to expand our stores. We are opening about 4-5 stores every month. We are opening 40 per cent of our stores in tier II and tier III markets,” Singh said, adding the company has plans to increase its capacity every three years and this year they have invested Rs 50-70 crore on new technology.

The company, that also has formal clothing range called Woods, a yoga line apart from its adventure shoe collection, is eyeing a growth of 30 per cent this fiscal. “We should close this fiscal with a revenue of Rs 750- 800 crore,” Singh said.

As part of its CSR initiative, Woodland has tied up with Unicef to provide fluoride-free drinking water which is expected to benefit over 8,000 villagers in Chandrapur and Nagpur districts.

The company has raised Rs 25 lakh from May through July from its sales (Rs 10 per every purchase) and the UN agency has utilised the funds to set up water tanks, filter sheds, hand washing areas (wash basins) vermin-comost pits, retrofitting toilets and constructing separate toilets for girls and boys and dining facilities in 10 schools.

“We approached Unicef to make a programme for us. Water is a basic need for everyone and this project called (Wash) attracted us the most,” Singh said.

The initiative will contribute to the Centre’s flagship programme, the total sanitation campaign. Maharashtra is a priority state constituting 8 per cent of the government’s total sanitation target.

“The village has more cellphones than toilets. People are not aware of hygiene and defecate in the open near sources of water, thus polluting them. They think if the water doesn’t have a bad odour then it is fit to drink,” Unicef Wash officer Yusuf Kabir said.

“It’s difficult to change the mindset. It is easy to handle schools but our target is to reach the community,” he added.

Woodland plans to become a 100 per cent eco-friendly company by 2017. It will also add 60 stores with focus on tier II and tier III cities, entailing an investment of Rs 2-3 crore for each store.