26.6.08

Retail Rising

The Retail industry is expected to sink all of $36 billion into various formats by 2013. This would result in an industry with an estimated turnover of $110 billion by 2014.After putting up some 572 Reliance Fresh Stores over some 1.5 million sq. ft, Reliance Retail wants to go the whole hog in hypermarkets—by July it will have hypermarkets over some 1 million sq. ft. Tata company Trent says it has 23 properties signed up for hypermarkets. Aditya Birla Retail is talking about 100 hypermarkets over the next few years. And Kishore Biyani, who opened his first Big Bazaar in 2003, is so far set to cross 100 Stores.

It’s time for the Reliance Retail juggernaut to unleash three more specialty formats on unsuspecting masses.They’ll all be under the Home umbrella—and the venture could even be called Reliance Home—with separate formats for furniture, furnishing and kitchen equipment. Consider the rollout so far: Hypermarkets, Reliance Town Centres, supermarkets, convenience stores, specialty stores (digital, health and wellness, apparel, etc.), rural business hubs; in categories like food & grocery, consumer durables & electronics, auto care and lifestyle. The big bang of course has been in foods & grocery, where RRL has 572 Reliance Fresh stores across 59 cities. And there’s the biggest store in India, the hypermart that’s branded Reliance Mart (there are three of them so far), in Ahmedabad, spread over 165,000 sq. ft.One of the many significant shifts in strategy at Reliance over the past year has been the eagerness to strike joint ventures. And that’s best manifested in the retail thrust. RRL has joint ventures with Marks & Spencer (for clothing and home ware), Pearl Europe for the launch of a chain of optical stores, and with Office Depot for office products and services.
The Reliance rollout
572 Reliance Fresh stores across 59 cities
3 Reliance Trends stores – Apparel & accessories
4 Reliance Footprint stores –Shoes
5 Reliance Digital stores – Consumer durables
2 Reliance TimeOut – Books, music, gift store
4 Reliance iStores – The Apple store
3 Reliance Mart – Hypermart
8 Reliance Super – Minimart
11 Reliance Wellness stores – Wellness products
2 Reliance Jewels stores – Jewellery
1 Reliance Autozone – Automotive specialty store

By 2010, the Tata group will have at least 700 outlets, across formats and categories, and of various sizes, going up to 50,000 sq. ft at the hypermarket end. These include 100 Croma stores, which sell consumer durables and electronics (not including proposed smaller formats of 3,500-8,000 sq. ft in downtown and high-street locations in metros), up to 70 Westside stores (for affordable fashion), perhaps 25 hypermarkets, which go under the Star India Bazaar brand, and at least 10 Landmark book stores. Tanishq (jewellery) will have 130 stores and The World of Titan (watches) stores would have 333 stores by the end of 2008. The biggest bang will, of course, come when Tata Motors rolls out its outlets to sell the Nano across the country.

After hypermarkets and supermarkets and dabbling with concept stores of its various brands, the $28-billion (Rs 120,400 crore) Aditya Birla conglomerate has launched a family store format in Mumbai.Madura Garments, the apparel retail business of the group, plans to invest Rs 400 crore to open 80 Peter England People stores, each spread across 10,000-12,000 sq. ft, over the next five years.The family store is the new plan on Birla’s drawing board. However, clearly it is the hypermarkets and supermarkets portfolio, under subsidiary Aditya Birla Retail Ltd, that is hogging most of his attention, and investments. The group’s foray into retail began in 2006 when it acquired Trinethra, the south Indiabased chain of stores. Trinethra has over 170 outlets in the south.By May 2007, the company had launched its ‘More’ brand of stores—while the supermarkets have a minimum size of 10,000 sq. ft, the hypermarkets are spread over 75,000 sq. ft. Until March 2008, the company had rolled out 500 supermarkets (including 275-odd Trinethra stores that have been now renamed ‘More,’) and two hypermarkets in Mysore and Vadodara. Eventually, the group hopes to scale up to 1,500 supermarkets and 100 hypermarkets.

Bharti Retail has put up three Easy Day stores in Ludhiana, the neighbourhood store format (spread over (2,500-4,500 sq. ft).Easy Day will also be opened in two other formats—medium or supermarket (25,000 sq. ft-45,000 sq. ft) and large or hypermarket (75,000 sq. ft-100,000 sq. ft). These will retail day-to-day family products.As for Wal-Mart, its cash and carry B2B stores will make their India debut sometime in 2009. Bharti Retail is now open to partnering with local store owners on a franchise basis, possibly to catch up with the other established players who have raced ahead with stores in every nook and cranny of India’s cities.Wal-Mart’s cash and carry formats are under development— and even then, it does not intend to rush into the market. The next seven years, for instance, will see just 10-15 stores opened under the cash and carry JV—concentrated largely in Tier 1 and Tier 2 cities across northern India, especially Punjab. The Wal-Mart B2B stores will have a maximum area of 100,000 sq. ft.

Indiabulls Retail Services, a wholly-owned subsidiary of Indiabulls Real Estate, over the next 12-18 months will set up a chain of groceries, lifestyle and wholesale stores. The company has already spent nearly Rs 400 crore in its retail venture.There are the Indiabulls Marts, which are small format stores, in the range of 4,000-5,000 sq. ft and stock groceries and general merchandise; Indiabulls Mega Stores, medium-size lifestyle stores, will follow; and Indiabulls Wholesale will be on the lines of the cash-and-carry format similar to Costco in the US.
Currently there are 35 Indiabulls Marts; these will go up to 100 stores and there will be 10 large-format wholesale stores planned to come up over the next 12-18 months.

Venugopal Nandlal Dhoot, Chairman & Managing Director, Videocon Group has an objective of notching up $3 billion (Rs 12,900 crore) in turnover from his retail venture—comprising Next, Planet M and, the latest offering, Bolld, which will be a wholesale cashand-carry B2B venture.His maiden retail venture, Next Retail—a revamped version of its Raymond acquisition, Plugin stores, which stocks consumer electronics and white goods—currently operates over 400 stores and is targeting adding another 400 by the end of the financial year.Planet M, which Dhoot bought from Bennett Coleman’s Times Music for Rs 200 crore, has been expanded to retail not just music and movies but also IT hardware products that specially target the youth. It currently has 150 stores across 42 cities and has been incorporated as a wholly-owned subsidiary of Next Retail. The big thrust is expected to come from Bolld, where it will pump in Rs 2,000 crore for a 25-city launch over the next three to four years. Bolld stores would have a minimum of 100,000 sq. ft area.

Dabur India ,the Rs 2,400-crore company plans to set up a chain of 300-400 retail outlets across the country, through its wholly-owned subsidiary H&B Stores. These outlets will be founded on the health and beauty platform, and branded “newu.”They’re modelled on foreign health and beauty retailers like Boots and Walgreens, and will sell pharmaceutical and overthe-counter products as well as other items such as health, food, confectionery, personal and baby care products, along with general merchandise.

Bata is now gung-ho on its expansion drive adding 70 stores (in the 1,000 sq. ft to 4,000 sq. ft range) a year to its current portfolio of 1,200. These stores would be in a four-tiered format —upmarket Flagship stores, trendy City Stores, traditional Family Stores and large format Super Stores. Bata has spun off it's Hush Puppies brand into standalone branded stores—with four stores operational in Hyderabad, Gurgaon, Noida and Ahmedabad. The company has also redesigned its retail outlets to cater to a younger consumer profile—bringing in brands like Marie Claire and Weinbrenner besides reinvigorating the almost defunct North Star sports shoe brand.

Shoppers’ Stop is expected to spend Rs 500 crore on expansions. This includes taking the number of stores from 24 to 41 over 3-5 years. and will expand from 1.5 million sq. ft to 3.3 million sq. ft space by 2011. The company also has a Hyper City, spread over 120,000 sq. ft, and is expected to expand this format to more than 25 stores in 36 months.

Future Group has a clutch of retail formats that cover some 9 million square feet of retail space in 55 cities (and 65 villages, courtesy the acquisition of a 70 per cent stake in Aadhar from Godrej). These include five mature formats: Central (seven of such lifestyle malls), Pantaloons (40), Big Bazaar hypermarkets (nearly 100), six discount stores called Brand Factory, and 135 Food Bazaars.Fashion and foods co-exist nicely at Future Group, with the former set to become a $1-billion business in the current year, accounting for 40 per cent of sales at the group level. Foods (which will also include home & personal care items) will bring in 34-35 per cent of revenues.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

People in America need to realize jus what got America in this shape...cheap... yes so-call cheap items from a foreign land.

quote*Wal-Mart firmly believes in local procurement. We recognize that by purchasing quality products, we can generate more job opportunities, support local manufacturing and boost economic development. Over 95% of the merchandise in our stores in China is sourced locally. We have established partnerships with nearly 20,000 suppliers in China. *end quote!

Now! if there be 182 country's making items for the world to buy and they have only 5% of the pie in China...duh! This company makes the nice people of China support their currency(yuan) by keeping it in their country working for the people there.... but with the yuan going up in value and the US dollar going down...all the foreign items that the American consumer buys thinking it is cheap has went up in price.

People...its all about the currency and to keep a currency strong you got to keep it floating around the country you live in so it can work for you. For the past 12 years all them US dollars are being shipped overseas to a foreign bank and with the American worker not making anything for the foreigner to buy the "we the people" have to turn to the "second" largest employer in America(Uncle Sam) to sell "we the people" debt in order to get all them dollars back!

50 years ago a foreigner would had given their left nut for a US dollar or a Hershey's chocolate bar and today the same foreigner has got Uncle Sam and the American consumer by both all the while Hershey is moving the chocolate factory to Mexico. Wake up! America and think "MADE IN AMERICA."