By Sharmila Katre Indian fashion has true potential to grow exponentially in the next decade. But before that, argues Sharmila Katre, there are many issues that the creators and producers of fashion need to address. Students of fashion design are taught the definition of fashion as ‘a reflection of lifestyles’, and truly the growth of the fashion industry in India in the past decade substantiates this. Fashion as a lucrative business proposition came to pass in the late 1980s with the advent of ‘salon’ stores like Ravissant and Vichitra Sarees that were the natural progression of the ‘boutique’ culture of…
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THE GROWING BLIP ON SMALL SCREENS It is just about taking off in India, but mobile marketing is getting a lot of attention. A special report on how marketers are planning to invade your mobile phones - and why. The soft taps of thumbs on mobile phone number pads are getting louder for Rajiv Hiranandani, co-founder, Mobile2Win, a digital and mobile entertainment company. "Clicks in this medium are 5-8 per cent and outperform clicks in the internet," he says. He is talking about the short message service (SMS), the most widely-used messaging vehicle in mobile marketing. Mobile2win provides information and…
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In recent years, sourcing and supply management has emerged as one of the greatest opportunity areas for retail business as well as for suppliers to leading retailers. At the same time, it is possibly also the one most prone to risk. This set of activities holds the key to improving service, product offer and overall profitability, and yet also provides some of the most difficult challenges of doing business globally. Certainly, you need to have winning products. Of course, you need to pick the best supply countries to source from and the best suppliers. Certainly negotiation and cost management are…
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By Diwakar Kumar Indiaretailing.com It is being said that it might be easy to turn cash into inventory but the main challenge is to turn the inventory back into more cash. According to researchers and analysts, many retailers fail to make more money just because of inefficient utilisation of space, labour, or product assortment in their operations. Tracking Gross Margin, which indicates the additional amount that a customer pays to the company for its product over and above the costs that the company incurs to procure or make it, has thus become critical for modern day retailers. Managing a sustainable…
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With the sector expected to create at least 2mn direct jobs in 5 years, there is a rash of grooming courses. Mint (partner to the Wall Street Journal), New Delhi, August 30, 2007 When Shoppers’ Stop Ltd was planning to roll out its first department store in Mumbai in 1991, less than 10 candidates showed up for a job advertisement for a dozen openings. One of the front-end employees quit soon after as his fiancée’s family objected to their would be son-in-law being a store associate. “So he decided to change (jobs) because he wanted to marry the girl,” says…
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