Hyper Books from Trent

Tata group controlled book and music retailer, Landmark, is all set to become a discount and neighbourhood store at the same time.Soon after buying out an additional 24 per cent stake from the Ramaiah family, Tata group-owned Trent has set up a new books, music and movies retailing format store — Hyper Books, which will sell bestsellers at discounts ranging from 10 to 20 per cent. This format will stock yesteryears’ hit movies and will carry a heavily localised collection as compared with Landmark’s conventional stores, which are largely skewed towards English and international titles.
At its just-opened Mumbai Hyper Books outlet in Andheri, Hindi and vernacular language music and movies will account for as high as 60-70 per cent of its total collection.Their books collection will be one-fourth Hindi, one-fourth Marathi, one-fourth Gujarati and remaining English.
The Tata-controlled chain has tied up with scores of language publishers such as Karadi Tales and Jaico Publishing House to populate its bestseller collections in local languages. It has also tied up with firms such as T-Series and Shemaroo Entertainment to help source movie VCDs at prices that are designed to compete with roadside vendors of pirated movies.
In addition to the Hyper Books retailing format, the Tatas also plan to open 6-7 new Landmark stores at an investment of Rs 5-7 crore per store this fiscal year.
In the fiscal year ended March 31, 2008, Landmark posted a turnover of around Rs 200 crore.
Noel Naval Tata, managing director Trent, told Financial Chronicle that over the next five years, the company hopes to have a network of 70 Westside stores, 25 Landmark stores and 50 Star Bazaars.“This year alone, we will expand the Westside store count from 31 to 43 despite new properties being delivered late,” Tata says.Westside, which has begun using franchises in addition to companyowned stores for expansion, is now looking to leverage synergies with other Tata companies.
“Companies such as Titan have successfully used franchises for a long time and we are exchanging notes with them in this area,” Tata adds. The company posted a consolidated turnover of Rs 716 crore and a profit after tax of Rs 33.64 crore in fiscal 2008. The Tata group held 32.16 per cent of its equity as of March 31, 2008, according to data from the National Stock Exchange.