In the last few months, I’ve interacted with retailers and their suppliers from a number of countries in North America, Europe and Asia and, except for a handful, the conversations have not been happy.

In November-December companies in France, Belgium, Germany and the United Kingdom were dealing with a season where there was as much red on the P&L statements as in the Christmas shop windows. In January 2009, the National Retail Federation’s annual convention in New York had participation that was somewhat thinner than in past years, but the gloom in the atmosphere was thick enough to slow everyone down.

On the other side, the factory of the world, China, had been battered by a Year of the Rat that brought increasing costs, erratic power supplies, slowdown in orders, safety concerns and product recalls. All of this culminated in reports of factory closures and migrant workers at railway stations on their way home for the Chinese New Year holiday carrying not just clothing, but all their possessions including fridges and TVs. The resultant unemployment figures expected currently range from 20 million to 40 million people.

The Indian retail sector, of course, has had its share of pain. In an idle conversation on a sunny December afternoon, a real estate broker in Ludhiana had a pithy description for one of the retail chains: “Unhone apne haath khade kar diye hain. Bakee logon ne abhi tak toh haath neeche rakhe huey hain – unke bhi upar ho jayenge.” (“They have thrown their hands up in despair. The rest still have their “hands down” – but they’ll also give up eventually.”)

On the one hand you have the gloom-seekers. In the eyes of some of these people, the retail boom is over. In the eyes of others, the retail boom was all hype anyway, a big bubble of artificial expectations.

On the other hand, you have other people asking some uncomfortable questions: here’s a country that apparently has the largest population of under-25s, where millions of new jobs have been created and incomes have been growing. How can retail businesses be showing a decline in their top-lines?

I don’t think anyone has all the answers, but I can offer at least one speculation, borrowing from the title of a book that came out some years ago, named “Irrational Exuberance”. Robert Shiller’s first edition was related to the dot-com stock bubble, and his 2005 edition added an analysis on housing bubble that was developing at the time. He had, in turn, borrowed the term from the US Federal Reserve chairman Alan Greenspan who in December 1996 had said in a speech: “…how do we know when irrational exuberance has unduly escalated asset values, which then become subject to unexpected and prolonged contractions…?”

We now seem to be in such an unexpected (but was it really unexpected?) and prolonged contraction. Of course, consumers are feeling more cautious about spending, even if their actual income has not been affected (just as it wasn’t affected when they were feeling suddenly wealthy 12-18 months ago). Obviously, stores that should not have been opened will now get closed, or excessively large stores will be reduced in size. Companies that are over-stretched may collapse completely.

But I would label the mood prevailing now “irrational despair” as far as a consumer market such as India is concerned. From a position of over-optimism, the pendulum seems to be swinging to the other extreme of utmost misery, dejection and complete pessimism, and I think that is a swing too far.

I think it’s worth reminding ourselves of the factors that make India a market for sustained consumer growth. The country looks likely to have a large under-25 profile well into the next several decades. These young people will grow older and get into jobs. They will get married and therefore expand the number of consuming households. If the policy-makers don’t really mess up, real incomes should go up. Infrastructure projects should largely remain on track, regardless of the political party or parties in power, facilitating industry, trade and wealth distribution.

So the time is right for business plans that have sound fundamental assumptions – or as the cement ad says: “andar sey solid” (solid from within).

I’d like to repeat issues that I have highlighted earlier as top priority for retailers and consumer products companies in India. These are as follows:

1. Realistic demand estimation: Let’s work with realistic sales expectations, and not expect all consumption to multiply like cellphones have in the last few years.
2. Productivity Analysis: As a retailer (especially in food and grocery), margins are thin. Except for marquee locations there is no excuse for continuous losses. Store productivity depends on merchandise availability, staff capabilities and store operations, customer traffic and a host of other factors, and you need to know what’s working and what isn’t.
3. Moderated growth: Many retailers in India have had tremendous growth in scale without growth in sophistication in processes or people. Some have been driven by motivation to capture market share, others driven by their investors who want an exit, and a few might have been driven by ego. I’m not asking anyone to grow slower that they want to, or slower than they should. However, I would say: do look at Intel. A manufacturing company that makes its own products obsolete in an industry where rapid change has been the norm for the last 40 years. Intel alternates changes in its production and supply chain processes, and products – it doesn’t change everything at once.
4. People: A leader of the industry pointed out a few months ago that there is no shortage of people in India. But the race to the top of the heap (or as it seems now, the bottom of the loss-making pile) has created artificial scarcity of talent. One benefit of the downturn is that artificially inflated compensations for people jumping on the “retail boom bandwagon” will disappear (at least for now). If we can use the experience of people who have been in modern retail trade in India for decades, and train others who are fresh but committed, it will provide a more solid and lasting impact for businesses.

A number of companies worldwide that we know as market leaders and businesses to be emulated found their feet in the depths of the Great Depression of the 1930s. That should give some hope to entrepreneurs and professionals.

However, does that mean that only bad companies or unprofessional managements will fail in the current downturn? Certainly not. Does it also mean that all good companies or competent entrepreneurs will succeed? Again, the answer is, no.

Some bad companies will manage to ride through this trough, while some really deserving people will run out of cash, ideas and opportunities. Life and “natural selection” processes are not fair.

But, by and large, if we can get our heads down and focus on getting the right people together, making money to get through and having something left over to invest in the future of the business, we would have more chances of succeeding than by over-stretching, or by swinging to the other extreme and being totally defensive.

I won’t even attempt to predict how long the current downturn will last. The Great Depression lasted a whole decade, was “walled” by the Second World War, and the first blooms of real recovery only appeared in the early-1950s, or about twenty years from the first downturn. Other recessions have been shorter. In 2000, after the dot-com bust car bumper stickers in the US quoted a political satirist, saying, “I want to be irrationally exuberant again.” Within a few short years, many people were showing those very signs.

We can be pretty sure that such a time will come again. But I’m also quite sure that durable companies are unlikely to be built on bursts of such exuberance.

Recently there was some discussion online about the so-called “politics of organized retailing” in India (on Retailwire).

I believe these are no different from the politics of anything else. There are interest-groups and pressure-groups with different objectives, who pull-and-push economic and regulatory policy with varying degrees of success. In that, India is no different from any other country, whether the US or China.

After China began opening up its economy in 1979, it took more than a decade for it to begin allowing foreign retailers to enter the market, and it was not before domestic retailers were given time to scale up.

Even in the US of current times, there are places where the community would be up in arms at the slightest whiff of a Wal-Mart store proposal.

Even in the UK, the Competition Commission is preparing a report on how retail consolidation is affecting the sector and the consumer.

So the answer to the question about “the politics of organized retail” is: yes, there is politics involved, and if you are an interested party then there is no option but to be part of the politics.

While on the issue about opportunities in the Indian market, I’m reminded of a couple of conversations, one with a client and another with an associate, who compared the Indian market to the US and the UK, respectively, in the 1970s.

My response to them, and to the question above, is: yes, there is tremendous opportunity in India now, as there was in those markets in the 1970s. Yes, in parts the market, the distribution structure etc. may remind you of the US and the UK in the 1970s. But to assume that it will play out the same way would be dangerous.

There are many other cultural, economic and social factors, apart from the infrastructure, to take into account.

My advice to international brands and retailers is as always: approach India as India in the 2008, don’t approach it as the US in the 1970s. Or as China, Brazil or Mexico.

Some pointers that may be interesting: “Slicing the Market” and other articles available elsewhere on the Third Eyesight website.

Many pundits have passed judgement on the inevitability of ‘organised retail’. Yet, around the world, independents continue to thrive.

One may think that at least in difficult economic phases – such as the one facing economies around the world right now – large retailers are better equipped to survive. Yet, often it is the flexibility of the owner-driven small business that rides out the trough. Service levels and personalisation – that are increasingly critical in an impersonal world – are often far better delivered by a small retailer. [See “Playing with the Big Boys”]

And when it comes to business across borders, I can’t think of any retailer that is truly global. Most retailers that have successfully run international businesses in multiple countries (Carrefour, increasingly Tesco and others) have had to localise significantly – often sacrificing scale to achieve localisation.

A well-written article by Paul Chapman in Mint (February 18, 2007) raises some of these points using India as an illustration. Worth a read: The Rocky Route to Modern Retail.

From a simple tower to human-sized figures of cartoon characters – we’ve seen a whole range of creative expression using a simple plastic brick. (Well, to be accurate, a wide variety of plastic bricks – but all developed around the same principle.)

An icon in a child’s world, the LEGO ® brick has just turned 50-years young.

According to the company, “there are actually more than 900 million different ways of combining six eight-stud bricks of the same colour.” Ample room for creativity!

The company itself is about 75 years old, and was named LEGO after the founder Ole Kirk Christiansen put two Danish words together – “Leg godt” – meaning “play well”.

The company has had its ups and downs, the brand has been extended to include other product / service offerings, and the group also includes other brands today. But the power of the simple LEGO brick lives on, even in this wired (or increasingly wireless) world.

The time the brand has been around just re-emphasised the point about consistency and time being very important building blocks for brands.

“Play Well!”