Retail News Update » gifts

Making the most of Valentine’s and Mother’s Day

admin — Tue, 05 Feb 2008 15:20:12 +0000

With Christmas just behind us, retail marketers have little time to catch their breath to plan for Valentine’s Day and Mother’s Day, which are just around the corner.

The two events fall unusually close together in this year’s calendar – just over two weeks apart – so retailers would be wise to consider them as one extended gift-buying peak, and plan accordingly.

Due to the current economic environment, shoppers will be more considered in their purchasing this year, and for many the internet will be their starting point. The retailers who make the most of this early spring peak will be the ones found extensively through search and on content sites, by consumers who are researching gift ideas, comparing products and prices, or making their final purchase.

At a time when overall marketing budgets are likely to come down, the transparency and accountability of search engine marketing and contextual targeting is appealing, as they allow marketers to track how much it costs to acquire new customers and drive profitable sales, while dynamically managing their budgets in line with demand.

We know that the best selling products throughout the season will be cards and flowers, chocolates, gift baskets, health and beauty products and jewellery, so retailers selling these products need to be sure they have exhaustive keyword coverage across these areas, and that they’re exploiting any relevant niche offerings they might have. They should prioritise and tailor ads to their best sellers, and try to capture consumers in extended brand territory with keywords like ‘luxury gifts’.

Timely delivery is a vital part of the e-commerce experience that retailers need to get right. Unlike Christmas, where delivery can happen days in advance, Mother’s Day and Valentine’s Day gifts often go direct to the recipient and need to arrive at the precise delivery times promised by the retailer. If a retailer offers free delivery or flexible options, these may be worth mentioning in ad text. Next day delivery can be an especially compelling selling point for last minute shoppers – namely all those forgetful boyfriends, husbands and sons. The easier retailers can make the experience for consumers, the more attractive their proposition will be.

With all those cards to send and flowers to buy, the opportunity for Valentine’s and Mother’s Day is clearly enormous – and the retailers best positioned to exploit it will maintain strong keyword covering across their whole range of products. Experience gifts, e-cards, cuddly toys and lingerie will all be in demand – though perhaps the latter won’t be so popular at Mother’s Day.

The best advice of all, though, is to maintain budgets closely, trial different text ads, and target different geographies and different times of day to see what really works best for your specific proposition. Search and contextual targeting is not a hands-off solution; it’s a dynamic and fast-moving medium, and managing it well can make the difference to how happy a retailer’s Valentine’s or Mother’s Day will be.

Article By Peter Fitzgerald
Peter Fitzgerald is Industry Leader, Retail, at Google

Card Factory adds 6 stores.

admin — Fri, 01 May 2009 06:18:33 +0000

UK’s leading greetings card retailer Card Factory has added six stores to its portfolio, bringing its count to 486, reports The Retail Week.

As part of the plan, the company has signed for units in Portsmouth and Winchester in Hampshire, Truro and Redruth in Cornwall, and Plympton and Teignmouth in Devon. The signings add around 14,000 square feet of space. The largest of new additions is Portsmouth, where the retailer has taken around 3,400 square feet unit, adds the report.

Established in 1997 and has been on the UK’s high streets for over ten years, Card Factory retails products including greetings cards, gifts, plush items, novelties and gift wrap.

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