By Raghavendra Kamath Business Standard Mumbai June 16, 2009 Speciality homeware retail chains, such as Kishore Biyani's HomeTown, Landmark group's Max Retail and Wadhawan group's Home Store, have changed tack as home sales drop and shoppers defer buying big-ticket items like furniture and furnishing to save cash in the downturn. The realty sector has seen home sales fall by up to 70 per cent in the early part of this calendar year from the peak in 2007-08 and developers have shifted to smaller, affordable homes to counter the drop in sales. Consequently, retailers are witnessing a drop in sales, too.…
By Sangita Ghosh and Sarimul Islam Choudhury Indiaretailing.com 12 June 2009 The sustainability of any business depends - to a large degree - on loyal customers who come back again and again for more shopping and organised retail is not an exception to that. This is a part of strategic management where the retailer has to think on the pointers of his business model; this includes service that leads to customer satisfaction, which leads to customer loyalty and which in turn leads to profitability. The factors related to retailer-customer relationship and the customer's satisfaction help retailers to have a better…
The world’s largest retailer earned bouquets as well as a few brickbats when it recently opened a Hispanic version of its large store format, named Supermercado de Walmart. The signs around the store are in Spanish as well as English, selling traditional Mexican national brands as well as traditional Hispanic food like tacos, tortas, aguas frescas, sopes, carnitas and barbacoa at the chain’s customary low prices. The surprise, if any, was that this store was not in a city in Mexico but in Houston, Texas, USA. Wal-Mart’s logic behind the format is that it would be more relevant to the…
Bernice Hurst, Contributing Editor, RetailWire mentioned the "Let Children Grow" campaign in the UK jointly promoted by The Independent on Sunday newspaper and the highly respected gardening charity, the Royal Horticultural Society (RHS). Launched in 2007, the RHS Campaign for School Gardening, sponsored by the food and grocery retailer Waitrose, is a nationwide scheme designed to encourage schools to create gardens and teach children the skills of growing plants. It is described as "an ambitious initiative to encourage the nation's children to grow their own fruit and vegetables". The programme targets deprived areas, particularly those with combinations of poor health, low…
By Devangshu Dutta, Tarang Gautam Saxena While the Indian consumers have aspired to own international fashion brands, India’s large population base in turn has been an aspirational market for the international companies. To remote observers, the Indian market may appear to be a virgin territory as far as international apparel and footwear brands are concerned. But India has seen the presence of international brands for almost a century, including mass brands such as Bata and luxury brands such as Louis Vuitton. However, as the colonial government systematically repressed local textile production, the local resistance to foreign products grew as well.…
Speciality Restaurants expanding into high-margin QSR and cloud kitchen spaces - @devangshu shared his perspective on the opportunities and realities of managing a diverse "house of brands" in the food service sector #India #strategy #diversification
Geopolitical friction has again sparked renewed concerns over inflation and rising input costs for FMCG companies as @itmeansjustice @whysnavi write. @devangshu commented.
