A walk through Reliance Mart

Let me start with a disclaimer: this is not written with a motive to discredit Reliance or any other retailer, rather it’s a self study to understand the Indian retail scenario.

I walked in at about 10:30 at the six month old Reliance Mart store in crown Interiorz Mall. The motive was to check out the supermarket format from Reliance, I had in the past visited Reliance Fresh and Trendz models but the Mart was a first.

The place is strangely quiet perhaps my choice of a Wednesday morning is the reason or the store’s inability to play some music is to blame.

I start my walk through the aisles which are wide and quite a treat. The product display though is not upto the mark; I see dust all over and torn product information tags. Also a little further into the furniture section ….I find a console with a broken glass panel still on display. That is a BIG No No that can’t be excused. It brought to an abrupt halt to a hitherto nice experience in the furniture section.

I moved on to a section which had some gift items and knick knacks….sadly most of the shelves were empty or had the same product repeated over and over. Infact there would have been 50-70 odd pieces of a small dusty looking elephant that looked like he needed a bath desperately.

Moving onto the clothes and accessories section, I find unkempt shelves, shoddy HOT spots and very uncommunicative staff who don’t even bother to check if a customer may need some assistance.

Passing through I reach the groceries section where I ask a passing staff member if sodexho food coupons are accepted at the store. The person nods and moves on. I pick up a few items and wander through to the billing section. Of the twenty odd counters only two seem to be manned though by now the time is close to noon.

I present my purchase and the sodexho coupons only to be told that they are redeemable againt food items, something that the previous staffer had neglected to mention. I present the credit card which is swiped atleast 9 times on three different machines before the payment can be made.

Billing for a purchase of 5 products worth Rs.269 takes almost ten minutes and two staff members to execute. I wonder what they will do in peak hours with more traffic in the store.

Overall: The store overall looks nice, is spacious and the categories are cleverly marked through circular signages hanging overhead. Where it needs a lot of tweaking is in personnel management and intelligent product placement.