Retail News Update » Shop-in-Shop

Orange shop-in-shop heading for HMV stores.

retailnu — Fri, 01 May 2009 06:22:42 +0000

Orange and HMV are teaming up to promote Orange products and services via store-in-store units in HMV stores.

Dedicated Orange ‘show and sell’ spaces will be situated in the entertainment retailer’s stores, with a focus on music, games and video mobile handsets and services.

The deal will extend Orange UK’s retail presence and contribute to taking the brand past the 400 high street stores landmark. It also underlines HMV’s growing interest in the mobile and digital marketplace as it continues to diversify its product mix and develop as a multi-channel brand.

A first wave of up to 15 concession stores will be rolled out from June 2009, with the HMV stores in Glasgow, Plymouth and Teesside earmarked as the first to incorporate an Orange offer. Up to 100 locations have been earmarked to take the store-in-store approach by Christmas.

“This deal marks the coming together of two of Britain’s biggest and most iconic high street brands,” Orange UK chief executive Tom Alexander. “Moving beyond mobile and into media and entertainment is a key part of our future, and joining forces with such an iconic and well-loved brand as HMV allows us to mark our clear intention in this area, while expanding our presence on the high street.

“HMV has been diversifying and extending its customer offer, which is increasingly becoming a multi-channel one with a growing emphasis on technology and new media,” says HMV chief executive Simon Fox. “I am delighted to welcome Orange into our stores – our brands reflect a shared passion for bringing entertainment content to life, and complement each other well.”

LG catching up fast in GSM market

retailnu — Mon, 11 May 2009 08:14:54 +0000

SOUTH Korean mobile phone manufacturer, LG Mobile’s assessment is that India can overtake China and become its largest market in terms of size and demand for handsets in the near future. In the background of a sharp economic slowdown in the US and Europe, the company has identified India as a strategic market for investment for its GSM and IT verticals, its managing director Moon B Shin said during an interaction with ET.
How important is India for LG, especially with demand in developed countries such as the US slowing down? What are your plans for India in the current fiscal?

India is an important market for us due to the opportunities it presents. We have plans to launch more than 32 new models here, of which six will be touch phones, while many other models will be 3G-enabled and some of these will also be entry level phones. At present, we have about three touch phones and six 3G-enabled handsets already in the market and we plan to have about 10 models each in both these segments by the year-end. We are betting big on the touch screen segment and we are targeting sales of up to six lakh units and a 10% market share in this space alone within the next six months.

What will be your investments in India this fiscal?

We will double our investment this year and the company as a whole will spend about Rs 400 crore on advertising this year. Additionally, we will invest Rs 200 crore in R&D to study market dynamics and consumer behaviour here. We are looking at increasing our headcount in our sales vertical to enhance our presence.

How many of the products you sell here are made here? How have your sales been so far?

Currently, we manufacture mobile phones at two units located in Pune and Greater Noida and these plants have a production capacity of three million units per year. About 70% of the production is exported while the rest is for domestic consumption. We sold about 2.4 million GSM handsets in India last year and we expect a 50% increase in sales this year.

Our institutional sales account for just 10% our total mobile sales.
Currently the Indian mobile handset market is dominated by some of your competitors.

How are you looking at improving your brand visibility here?

LG is rapidly gaining market share in the GSM market, despite being a late entrant. We are already the fifth-largest player in the segment. I believe our distribution line was poor earlier, but now we are reworking our strategy here. Based on the analysis of our marketing team, we are deploying 1,000 additional shop sales executives and we will be launching about 1,000 additional shop-inshop formats in rural and tier II cities. On the organised retail front, the overall channel coverage is at 42%.

India is an important market for us due to the opportunities it presents. We have plans to launch more than 32 new models here… We are betting big on the touch screen segment
MOON B SHIN

MANAGING DIRECTOR, LG

Target to Add Mini Markets to 100 Stores

admin — Sat, 16 May 2009 08:21:07 +0000

In a bid to increase business and customer count, Minneapolis-based Target Corp. will add new store-within-a-store grocery and fresh foods mini markets in about 100 new and remodeled stores during the course of this year, according to Progressivegrocer.com. If deemed a success, the company may eventually expand the section to all of its stores, said Target CEO Gregg Steinhafel in press reports. Although Target has long offered a full array of groceries at its SuperTarget stores, as well as a scaled-down presentation of food and beverages in most of its other stores, the latest iteration of its food-focused format aims to increase those offerings in its standard-size stores. The chain first tested the concept last year at two Twin Cities, Minn., stores and added eight additional test locations in other states earlier this year. The test stores now carry 50 percent to 200 percent more food products than its traditional stores, including a more prominent array of fresh produce, meats and bakery items in roughly 1,500 sq. ft. of space.

Target to Add Mini Markets to 100 Stores

retailnu — Sat, 16 May 2009 08:21:07 +0000

Retail majors in rightsizing mode

retailnu — Tue, 19 May 2009 14:43:54 +0000

IN A bid to maximise sales per square feet, Indias frontline retailers are increasingly looking at ways to restructure their stores. Leading players like Future Group, Spencers Retail, Shoppers Stop and Vishal Retail plan to rightsize their stores and replace slow-moving categories with speciality formats under the shop-in-shop model.

Retailers feel such an approach will also help them improve gross margin returns per sq ft in the present environment when same store sales growth is quite weak. A shop-inshop approach helps increase revenue per sq ft. It enables best utilisation of space and is a good way to do away with excess space and reduce space for categories which are not doing well, Future Group CEORetail Rakesh Biyani told ET.

Future Group plans to offer a wider choice in large-format stores like Big Bazaar by setting up speciality zones under the shop-in-shop model. This approach provides consumers with a wider choice. We have a similar model for the Pantaloons outlets in the East and may replicate it elsewhere, Mr Biyani said. Shoppers Stop recently tied up with Cafe Coffee Day to manage cafes within its stores. It is an ongoing process to maximise returns, said managing director BS Nagesh. The most common categories where retailers are looking for shop-inshop outlets include food and beverage, saris and areas which have more customerconnect requirement like cosmetics, personal care products, fine jewellery and salons, says Retailers Association of India CEO Kumar Rajagopalan.

Spencers Retail, which is presently rightsizing by cutting down on 20% of its retail space, also plans to focus on shopinshops. In a slowdown, shop-in-shops are the best way to leverage domain knowledge of speciality players and maximise returns. Such outlets will be set up through our groups speciality formats like Books & Beyond, Mera World, Music World as well as in collaboration with other players, Spencers Retail marketing head Samar S Sheikhawat.

Vishal Retail group president Ambeek Khemka said the retailer too is restructuring its 171 stores nationally. We have already completed the exercise for 35-odd stores and the results are encouraging. In fact, small and regional brands are lapping up the opportunity to follow the shop-in-shops model, he said.

Economic Times: Writankar Mukherjee & Sreeradha D Basu, KOLKATA

Retailers Work under one roof by sharing space.

admin — Fri, 09 Apr 2010 03:34:08 +0000

Now Rival Retailers Work under one roof

SHARING SPACE TO EXPAND SPECIALTY CHAINS

THEY are fierce rivals in the marketplace, but big retailers such as Future Group, Reliance Retail, RPG Retail and Aditya Birla Retail now tap each other’s synergies to expand their specialty chains.

So, walk into a ‘Central’ mall of Kishore Biyani’s Future Group and you may well see Reliance TimeOut, the gift-music-book format of Mukesh Ambani’s Reliance Retail. Reliance’s optical chain Vision Express shares some premises of Birla group’s ‘More’ hypermarkets, while RPG Retail has rolled out 20 Music World stores inside Future Group’s Big Bazaar outlets.
“Retailers have now realised that they alone cannot manage all categories on their own, how much hard they may try,” says Arvind Singhal, chairman of retail consultancy Technopak Advisors.
Future Group CEO Kishore Biyani says it’s a win-win model for both retailers and customers. “The retailers can exploit each other’s synergies in non-competing categories, which ultimately helps the customer get a wider choice from the same store,” he says. “We are open to locate our specialty stores in other’s premises, if such opportunities come up.”
There has been a flurry of deals and expansions in the $20-billion organized retail sector over the last five years since companies such as Reliance, Aditya Birla and Bharti entered the turf and started floating specialty chains on their own or in tieup with foreign players.
“There are obvious opportunities to associate with each other, provided the brand positioning of the stores match,” says Bijou Kurien, president and chief executive
(lifestyle) of Reliance Retail.
He says that this model of co-locating stores could emerge as a way to expand. “We understand each other’s issues like constraints in standalone expansion and profitability.”
The concept of shop-in-shop within largeformat stores such as hypermarkets is selling like hot cakes among garment and other single/limited product retailers because it saves them the cost of operating standalone stores and gives access to a captive consumer base of the large format.
Also, specialty shop-in-shop owners need not worry about associated costs like security, civil engineering and air-conditioning, says Mr Singhal of Technopak.
Retailers say running a shop-in-shop costs at least 25% less than a standalone shop of the same size.
These deals mostly follow a revenue-sharing model, but retailers say there is no standard formula on the percentage of revenue shared. It depends on the customer traffic the large store is able to drawn.
In some cases, there could be sharing of shop-floor employees, sharing of loyalty schemes and payment counters.
“The model of collaborative expansion will drive efficiencies,” says K Dasaratharaman, president (speciality retail) of RPG Retail, which plans to more than double the number of its music-and-movie chain Music World outlets inside Big Bazaar. “We are talking to few others like Aditya Birla Group to expand on this model,” he says.
Shoppers Stop vice-chairman B S Nagesh says the chain will explore this model to expand its book retail chain Crossword. “Distribution has emerged as the key point in the country,” he says.
Reliance Retail
Reliance DIGITAL — Consumer durable & information technology
Reliance TRENDS — Apparel & accessories
Reliance WELLNESS — Health, wellness & beauty
Reliance FOOTPRINT — Footwear
Reliance JEWELS — Jewellery
Reliance TIMEOUT — Books, music & entertainment
Reliance AUTOZONE — Automotive products & services
Reliance LIVING — Homeware, furniture, modular kitchens, furnishings SPECIALTY CHAINS OF BIG RETAILERS
Future Group
PLANET SPORTS — Sports lifestyle NAVARAS — Jewellery aLL — Fashion for plus-sized people DEPOT — Books
RPG Retail
MUSIC WORLD BOOKS & BEYOND
Tata Group
LANDMARK — Books, music, gifts, movie

Vivacity Mall to host “Shopper’s Stop” and “Hyper City” as its Anchor tenants

admin — Thu, 01 Jul 2010 05:22:04 +0000

Mumbai, June 30, 2010: Vivacity Mall, a wholly owned subsidiary of Sheth Developers, has signed with K Raheja Group— to set up Shoppers Stop; a family store, with value merchandise and Hyper City, the hypermarket chain stores within the upcoming Vivacity Mall at Thane.

Vivacity will be housing, ‘Hyper City’ and ‘Shoppers’ Stop,’ as its anchor tenants. The two format retailers belonging to K Raheja group have leased an area of 85,000 sq.ft and 65, 000 sq ft respectively spread across the ground floor and the first floor. In one of its earlier developments, Sheth developers also announced its tie up with Cinepolis to set up fourteen screen megaplex with a facility to showcase over 70 shows on a single day with a seating capacity of 2,400 people.

Speaking about the 2 large anchors coming on board with Vivacity Mall, Mr.JP.Biswas, VP Leasing & Marketing, Sheth Developers said, “Our tie-up with Shopper’s Stop and Hypercity is in line with our promise of getting top brands in to Vivacity. We look forward to give a world class shopping experience to our customers all under one roof. With all these brands pitching in at Vivacity, we feel our customers will rediscover the way they shop.”

Commenting on its strategic tie-up with Vivacity, Govind Shrikhande, Customer Care Associate & President & CEO, Shopper’s Stop Ltd, said, “We always wanted to have a large Shoppers Stop store in Thane. Vivacity has filled in the gap perfectly for us. In our opinion Vivacity will be a dominant retail property in the Central suburbs. The size and expanse of the mall combined with our ability to pull customers will be key to the success of both Shoppers Stop as well as Vivacity.”

Speaking further on being the anchor tenant of Vivacity, B.S.Nagesh, Customer Care Associate & Vice-Chairman, Hyper City Retail Pvt, Ltd said, “We feel that Thane and its adjacent catchment area has a lot of present potential, and when we take into account the upcoming projects, the outlook becomes one of the brightest in the country. In view of this we have signed up for our second Hypercity in Thane at Vivacity. The strategic location of Vivacity and its ease of access is ideal for a hypermarket.”

Vivacity will be located on the Eastern Express Highway, spread over an area on 1 million sq.ft. Vivacity is first retail venture of the Sheth Developers and happens to be one of the largest malls in the state, with one-of-its kind experience for its consumers. The mall has currently has 37% occupancy by retailers from the country and are hoping for a 100% occupancy by the end of the year. The Mall is slated to open its doors for its consumer in the mid of FY 2011 – 12

About Sheth Developers:

Sheth Developers is one of the trusted Real Estate and Property Company with major presence in Western India and UAE with over 20 years of experience in building large residential and commercial complexes and townships in Mumbai and the suburbs. Sheth Developers is one of the few real estate developers to have won the prestigious awards like Best Interior Design for Iris Bay Dubai, Best High Rise Development for Vasant Lawns Thane; Best Residential Building for BeauMonde , Mumbai and many more. Also, it is one of the few distinguished developers to have won the Best Developer Retail Project (Future) for designing Vivacity Mall, Thane; one of the largest Malls in India. Sheth Developers Pvt Ltd has earned consistent accolades for its notable projects in India and abroad.

About Vivacity

Sheth Developers has extended its real estate presence with its colossal retail development – Vivacity. One of the largest malls in the country with a GLA close to 1 million sq ft, Vivacity is set to raise the bar in the industry. With a team of best in the class professionals on the projects, marketing and leasing fronts, Vivacity will ensure that both the retailers’ and the consumers’ interests are well taken care of.

For further information please visit: www.shethdevelopers.com

Media Contact for Vivacity:

Leon De Souza / Deepshri Iyer

leon@corvoshandwick.co.in / deepshri@corvoshandwick.co.in

+91 9833581376 / +91 9987266410

New Tune: Nokia rings in retail-distribution model

admin — Fri, 23 Jul 2010 11:07:09 +0000

NOKIA India, betting big on its bouquet of mobile services to win back lost market share, has forayed into a retail distribution model. The Finnish giant has set up 350 shop-inshops inside mobile phone retail stores in top 16 cities from where it plans to distribute and sell services such as applications, music, navigation and email solutions, a senior official at Nokia India said.

This is the first time the world’s largest mobile phone company has initiated a retail distribution model for its services venture. Nokia has plans to scale this up in a big way, especially in the rural areas, once the pilot phase is over in another six months.

“Since PC and broadband penetration is low in India, it is important to build a retail distribution model to take services to the masses,” said Nokia India head (OPM & devices) Jasmeet Gandhi. “This will be a platform which will have immense possibilities and the potential to transform the services business as we can tap our huge dealer network,” he said.

Nokia India is also soon coming with a local billing model for its mobile applications store, Ovi Store. At present, there are around 50,000 applications in the store. “We will also make available the applications store in our services retail point so that consumers can conveniently buy mobile applications there,” said Mr Gandhi.

The retail distribution from Nokia comes at a time when the company has already made a few of its services free in India. It has already made navigation service free and has recently announced free unlimited download of music with select handsets. Nokia feels such a strategy will be vital as more than 80% of Indian consumers already access or download free digital content.

“While free music is currently available in five handsets, we plan to take this to handsets across price bands or at least the top 15 models. This even includes the mass market range which runs on the S40 operating system,” said Mr Gandhi.

Even though its early days for Nokia in the mobile services space, India has already emerged as one of the top markets. India ranks amongst the top three market for music downloads with around one million registered users, next to UK and Italy.

In terms of total downloads from the Ovi Store, India ranks amongst the top three markets and in navigation services, it figures amongst the top ten countries. For push email service, Nokia is clocking more than one lakh activation per month in India, making it amongst the top five markets globally.

Future Group to build wholesale markets

admin — Thu, 16 Jun 2011 04:41:03 +0000

Agre Developers, a Future Group company, formerly known as Future Mall Management, has struck a deal with Bangalore-based developer the Sattva Group to build a wholesale trading market on the lines of Dubai’s Dragon Mart and China’s Yiwu wholesale market. This is the first of the eight businessto-business (B2B) markets that the company is planning to start across major cities in the course of the next few years. These trading hubs will stock general merchandise, IT peripherals, hardware products along with other commodities typically spread across a 5-10 acre space. The BSE listed-company will also be getting into the infra-logistics and retail infrastructure business.

Kishore Biyani had merged his real-estate business with Kolkata-based developer Sumit Dabriwala into Agre Developers to strengthen the retail major’s foothold in the realty space. The retail to financial services group runs stores like Big Bazaar and Food Bazaar.

Sumit Dabriwala, MD, Agre Developers, told TOI, that the strategy for the company going forward will be to tie-up with strategic partners to facilitate the opening of these tradings hubs and also to build infra-logistics across the country. Agre Developers will work in tandem with Future Supply Chain, the logistics and supply chain vertical of the group, on the infra-logistics business.

“Even as the demand of logistics in the country expands, supply of good quality logistics infrastructure is extremely low. This is where we will work with Future Supply Chain and also with other logistics companies,” Dabriwala said.

The company will look to plough about Rs 500 crore of equity across the three formats and is evaluating the possibility of inviting strategic partners into each of these businesses. The total outlay on the three business verticals will be around Rs.3500 crore over the next five years, said Dabriwala.

“While the wholesale trading and the infra-logistics business will be in partnership with another entity, the retail infrastructure vertical of the company will be operated independently.

“On the retail infrastructure side, the mandate is to play a bigger role which will start right from spotting the location of the mall to designing the mall, determining the tenant mix, sub-leasing the mall and managing it over the life cycle of the transaction,” Dabriwala pointed out.

New Stop & Shop concept store opens in Chelmsford

admin — Wed, 09 Nov 2011 11:28:36 +0000

New Stop & Shop concept store opens in Chelmsford with following convenience options:

An on-site nutritionist: The company has hired a professional nutritionist who will be available for consultations. The cost, according to Robinson, will be $25 an hour, but the customer will get that $25 back in the form of a gift card.

Day care services: Stop & Shop is introducing “The Tree House” – a room where supervised day care is provided for up to 90 minutes for free, for children ages 3 through 9.

Curbside pickup: Customers will be able to order groceries on a computer and pick them up at the store without leaving their cars. They can pull up to a designated curbside pickup area where a Stop & Shop employee will process the payment and load the shopper’s car.