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…
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…
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…
REVIEW: DISCORDANT DEMOCRATS: ARUN MAIRA (Penguin Books India) As I read through Arun Maira's book, the month unfolded with a number of high-pitched disagreements around the world. In India, quotas and reservations were a hot topic, as was an apparent divergence between the Prime Minister and corporate chiefs on executive income and distribution of wealth. Self-appointed moral police disapproved the expressions of a student of art, while, elsewhere in the world, suicide bombers expressed disapproval of foreigners on their soil. We are surely not the first to wonder why, after millennia of physiological evolution, societies around the world are still…
FARM RETAIL The New Middle Man In recent weeks, Usha Tandon's routine has changed slightly. She has been walking an extra half kilometre to get her supply of fresh vegetables and fruits from a swank new retail outlet. Tandon, 50, is cook-cum-housekeeper to a busy professional couple in Delhi’s Saket locality, and it is part of her job to lay in the groceries. She has a tight schedule herself but Tandon doesn’t mind walking that extra stretch because she likes ‘the experience’ — an airconditioned store with attractively shelved wares and half a dozen uniformed assistants to attend on customers.…
Geopolitical friction has again sparked renewed concerns over inflation and rising input costs for FMCG companies as @itmeansjustice @whysnavi write. @devangshu commented.
