Waitrose opened its first convenience store yesterday, in Nottingham. The 5,815 sq ft (540 sq m) shop, in the city’s Trinity Square, is located opposite the John Lewis department store and is the first of a four-branch convenience store trial.

The shop has fresh fish and meat counters, a bakery and a self-service food bar where shoppers can select from smoothies, granola and yoghurts in the morning and sandwiches and salads for lunch and evening meals.

Waitrose managing director Mark Price said: “We believe you shouldn’t have to compromise on the standard of your shopping experience just because a store is smaller and designed for convenience. We want to revive the traditional service typical of convenience shops, which customers value, but within a fresh and contemporary setting.”

Waitrose plans to open a second convenience store in Bristol in the spring.

* Published: 12 December 2008 12:47

X5 Retail Group, Russia’s largest retailer in terms of turnover, reported a massive 53% rise in sales in 2008. X5′s incredible sales growth, came on the back another incredible achievement – the company opened 233 new stores in the year, including the 24 Karusel hypermarkets which it acquired in June 2008. Growth through organic store openings and acquisitions, combined with a solid like-for-like performance (+22%), ensured that X5 remained ahead of the pack in 2008.

This put the group, which operates over 1,000 stores under several formats including hypermarkets, supermarkets and discounters, in a strong position to confront a difficult market in the year ahead.

Magnit, which operates over 2,000 convenience stores and 14 hypermarkets in the Russian Federation, revealed a 44.0% rise in sales in December and a like-for-like increase for the year of 18.8%. Seventh Continent, the largest grocery chain in Moscow, reported a 22.5% rise in sales in 2008.

The company increased its selling space by 17% in 2008, opening 14 new stores, including three hypermarkets. The retailer now operates a network of 140 stores in Russia, including 131 supermarkets and nine hypermarkets.

 In a challenging economic scenario, companies are taking notice of the contribution of this often ignored sales channel. According to FMCG industry estimates, these outlets have mushroomed significantly in recent years to contribute about 20% of retail sales from 10-12% a couple of years ago.

Typically, companies sell inventories to large re-distributors, which buy in bulk at discounted rates. Small paan-shop owners in big cities and rural markets then buy stocks from them in small quantities according to their requirements. In recent times, however, Pepsi, Coke, Parle Biscuits, Colgate and Cadbury, among other FMCG majors, have started servicing these outlets directly in metros. “These are no longer paan shops and are actually small top-up FMCG dealers. Most of them stock up a whole range of non-tobacco products, including personal care items,” Marico CEO Saugata Gupta said.

Consider the case of GlaxoSmithKline Consumer Healthcare (GSKCH). According to Nielsen data, ‘paan plus’ type of stores account for 10% of the company’s overall business as against organised trade which contributes only 4%. This, when GSKCH’s products comprise mostly non-impulse products, like Horlicks and Boost, that are sold through paan stores. GSKCH’s executive VP (marketing) Shubhajit Sen said: “We don’t cover these outlets directly, but quite often we have seen our products stocked in such shops, and this is true specially for low-priced stockkeeping units and sachets.”

The paan shops cater to consumers on-the-go and the urban poor. Small packs contribute a sizeable chunk of sales from these outlets. “We ensure that these outlets are serviced directly and indirectly and it is a very important sales channel for us,” Sanjay Purohit, executive director (marketing) of Cadbury India, said.

“Ours being a largely impulsepurchase category, paan shops account for a huge chunk of sales for us. Such stores have the distinct advantage of offering on-the-move convenience of purchase,” Satyavrat Pendarkar, PepsiCo’s (Frito Lay) director sales and supply chain, said.

According to Dhairyashil H Patil, vice-president of Maharashtra State Consumer Product Distributor’s Federation, the percentage of consumers who buy things on a daily basis in India is huge. “These paan shops cater to this consumer base. On an average, there are 345 outlets for a population of one lakh, and paan shops constitute over 15-20% of this number,” he said.

 Samsika Marketing Consultants MD Jagdeep Kapoor said: “As compared with modern formats, these smaller shops are far more organised. They have great business models with better inter-personal skills, good cash-flows and low overheads. We expect this channel to contribute over 25% of sales in the next few years.”

WHEN SMALL IS BETTER

Big cos have now started taking notice of the contribution of this often ignored sales channel These outlets in recent years have contributed around 20% of retail sales In recent times, Pepsi, Coke, Colgate, among other FMCG majors, have started servicing these outlets directly.

McDonald’s India is a 50:50 joint venture between McDonald’s and Hardcastle Restaurants for west and south India. For east and north India, the food retailer has a tie up with Vikram Bakshi’s Cannaught Plaza Restaurants. McDonald’s refrained from hiking prices despite rising pressure on input costs last year. “Currently, we do not see any reason for raising prices of our food items as the commodity prices, especially edible oil prices, have eased and our back-end supply-chain is strong enough,” Mr Jatia added. The largest fast-food retail network will invest around Rs 120 crore, excluding real estate, for its expansion. The food retailer offers services to 180 million customers every year from its 155 outlets and expects to manage the customer growth rate of 30-40% on y-o-y basis. Further, it has tied up with BPCL and HPCL to open restaurants at their upcoming motels on express highways.

Related post on MdDonald’s

According to Diesel US CEO Steve Birkhold, Renzo Rosso, the company’s founder, recognizes the value of PR and marketing and has increased its spend. “In a time of economic difficulty, Renzo Rosso believes now is the time to makes sure we clearly communicate what our brand stands for and what our path forward in future is,” Birkhold said.

However, rather than throw a typical splashy launch party, the company chose a more localized and “understated” approach in deference to the economic downturn, he noted.

The PR team, working with Fingerprint Communications, transformed the store window into a dining room. Throughout the week iconic New York figures like Giants players and Ford models will sit, in full view of passers-by and partake in dinners catered by well-known New York restaurants. Diesel also planned to deploy a “street team” in Mohawks and Diesel gear for the week.

“We’ve shifted our strategy to… focus on [driving] traffic into our retail stores because the majority of our business is our retail stores,” he said. “We didn’t solicit a lot of media. We thought we’d do it organically… People are going to walk by and discover it.”

Source: PR Week

Family Mart convenience stores, for instance, will launch three new kinds of meal boxes at a unit price of NT$50, lower than the previous price of NT$60.

Lin Chui-chuan, public relations manager of Family Mart, said that Family Mart will launch the “one NT$50 coin can settle one meal for you” campaign to attract patronage from more office workers starting March 10.

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The stores’ openings will come just weeks after the retailer cut 600 people from its headquarters staff amid what it called weaker-than-expected sales.

The retailer will hold grand openings for the 21 general merchandise stores and six full-grocery SuperTarget stores on Sunday. The new sites include the company’s first two stores in Hawaii.

Each general merchandise store employs 150 to 250 people, and each SuperTarget has 200 to 300 workers, the company said.

In late January, Minnesota-based Target cut its headquarters staff by 9 percent and eliminated 400 open positions. The company, citing difficult economic conditions and sales that didn’t meet expectations, also said it would soon close an Arkansas distribution center that employs 500 people and would cut back on planned new-store openings.

“We are clearly operating in an unprecedented economic environment that requires us to make some extremely difficult decisions to ensure Target remains competitive over the long term,” Gregg Steinhafel, Target president and CEO, said in a news release that month.

Retailers in the United States took a hit last year as a weak economy weighed on consumer spending. Retail sales fell six straight months until January, when sales rose 1 percent, according to the Commerce Department. However, retail experts said they were skeptical a rebound had taken hold.

Still, two other retailers also announced plans to expand. Kohl’s announced last month that it intends to open 55 stores in 2009, and Dollar General in February said it is looking to open more than 400 stores.

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Adidas  has already debuted its ‘Me, Myself’ brand and retail drive in Singapore

The ‘Me, Myself’ campaign will feature Biggest Loser trainer Michelle Bridges and various female sports star ‘ambassadors’ in action.

Highlights of the campaign include the launch of the new adidas women’s website. This allows users to create and personalise their own colour palettes so they can mix and match outfits featured in the adidas women’s collection.

The ‘Me, Myself’ autumn/winter 2009 campaign launches in women’s fashion and health magazines this month.

Both Sears and Kmart customers can now conveniently experience these innovative and best-in-class, multi-channel purchase opportunities in stores and online. As more and more new multi-channel capabilities are made available, the ShopYourWay banner will help identify the many choices for Sears and Kmart customers.

ShopYourWay provides the best of what Sears and Kmart offer – great prices everyday and one of the largest assortment of brands, products and services of any store online or offline through Sears.com and Kmart.com, Sears2go, Web to Store, Store to Web, 1-800-4-MY-HOME and in-store visits. Its expanded selection of jewelry, apparel, electronics, tool, shoes and power lawn & garden equipment are now always available on Sears.com or Kmart.com.

“ShopYourWay revolves around the lives of our customers,” said Richard Gerstein, Sears Holdings Corporation’s senior vice president, marketing. “By letting their schedules determine the way they shop, our customers can take advantage of making purchases in-store, online, over the phone and with mobile capabilities.

ShopYourWay empowers our customers to manage their lives by providing them with unique services, expanded selections and the best prices.”

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The store will be called Sony StyleComcast Labs and ensconced in the Comcast Center, the newest skyscraper in Philadelphia and headquarters of the United State’s largest cable operator.

The store, more than 3,400 square feet (315 sq. meters), will show off such things as home broadband equipment that would enable people to surf at 100 megabits per second — roughly 17 times the average speed of cable broadband. Comcast plans to roll out service that fast by year’s end.

Sony will display a new TV running Comcast’s TV interface. It uses Tru2way, which is software that cable providers are rolling out to standardize their systems so the same set-top box can work with any cable operator. The store also will sell Sony PlayStations, laptops, cameras and camcorders.

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