Being New Age Retail Ready

Let’s start with understanding what New Age Retail really means.

Then : You run out of detergent. You pick up your wallet, walk out of home to the local market, pick up a pack and return home.

Now : you run out of detergent. You have the option to:
1) Call your neighborhood grocer and ask him to deliver
2) Pick up the phone and call your nearest retail chain and order
3) Order online with your favorite chain
4) Order online at a discount site
5) Pick up your wallet and walk to your local market

This in a nutshell is the change that Indian retail is witnessing today. On one hand there is an explosion of online and modern format, on the other traditional trade is gearing up for the challenge by investing and improving on their scale and services. Net net: the customer is spoiled for choice. Neither any brand nor any one format or chain can claim autonomy.

From Identifiers to Store Designs to Ambience Creation to Retail Identity and Activation an agency needs to be adept at every aspect of retail. The biggest strength would have to be the ability to plan and manage activities at the micro level which is where most brands face a challenge. Since planning for a change at a corporate level is one aspect however achieving that plan across the country within given timelines is another matter all together.

One thing which is a must for decoding New Age Retail is shopping.
Shop for new ideas, opportunities, possibilities and ways and means to make a dream come true.

This could and should involve various traditional wings of an agency. For example digital, BTL, experiential, trade marketing and retail design will all need to join hands to be able to deliver results.

Retail in India is kaleidoscopic in variety and depth and therefore needs constant monitoring. Multi layered formats – from luxury malls to thelas, target audience that uses a BMW to a rickety cycle and an ever evolving market that is seeing foreign as well as home grown brands vying for space.

Top down planning cannot work in such a scenario, in order to have a winning retail strategy in place the most important aspect is to be able to study and differentiate nuances of the market and then respond to it in the shortest possible time. Once implemented its critical to be able to have fair audits and updates in order to retain the edge gained.

More avenues for the Mall Rat...

Malls are great places to shop at but only once you get inside. From outside Malls are just another big building. DLF changed all that by deciding to bring in the flavour of an open Indian bazaar to its otherwise posh retail destinations Emporio and Promenade located in Vasant Kunj, South Delhi.

Our team was roped in to develop an outdoor kiosk for DLF with movable option which would be open from 3 sides so that people could walk around and experience the products and services offered.

The challenge was to offer a solution which would be in keeping with MCD laws that don’t allow a fixed kiosk outside the mall at the same time premium and sturdy too. The unit should also be able to catch the attention of those who were traveling on Nelson Mandela Marg and pull them in.

The solution offered had: kiosks with movable option stands on four pillars with industrial wheels ,dismountable shutters with locking option & a storage unit of the same with illuminates the facia .

The completed kiosk have been taken up by tenants such as Costa Coffee, Coco Bary ,Corn n more, etc. The tenants are a happy lot as they have been consistently reporting better footfalls than traditional kiosk.

Airport Retailing - a strategy that worked

After the arrival of malls, ‘airport retailing’ is the next big thing to have hit the Indian retail stores. However in spite of world class stores being set up at airport terminals, owners still witness a lack of business and footfalls.

We worked with DIAL to identify the problem and find a soultion. Travellers were spending close to an hour at the terminal on an average just waiting for their flights to be announced and yet shopping though close at hand was not taking off. A study revealed that the primary cause for this, was that the travelers perceived the airport stores to be more expensive than their city counterparts. and the ever cautious Indian shopper refused mentally to spend extra.

The challenge hence was to mitigate the myth. We worked on a strategy to figure out a way by which footfalls and sales could be increased at the stores within the domestic departure terminal of DIAL.

To create footfalls and generate sales a campaign called Best For Less was initiated which included everything from booklets, price tags, standees and banners bearing the title of the campaign – Best for Less.

Shops at the terminal like Fab India, Guardian, Cookieman, Satya Paul, Odyssey, Swarovski, William Pen, Hidesign along with the F&B brands such as FresCo, Southern Spirit and Curry Republic and those in the food court participated in the campaign.

The campaign that is centered around a booklet of offers ensured that people got to know about the 'steal deals' available at the terminal without having to walk into individual stores. To facilitate the distribution of the booklets, stands were kept at strategic locations in the terminal along with standees which highlighted the best offers at specific shops. Banners, stickers etc. added to the communication.

Happy to report that the campaign has been a success and is now running its third phase.

Category – Management, Captaincy & Leadership skills

Category Management is a retailing concept in which the total range of products sold in a store is broken down into discrete groups of similar or related products; these groups are known as product categories. Each category is then run like a "mini business" (Business Unit) in its own right, with its own set of turnover, targets and strategies.

An important facet of Category Management is the shift in relationship between retailer and supplier: instead of the traditional adversarial relationship, the relationship moves to one of collaboration, exchange of information and data and joint business building.

The focus of all negotiations is centered on the effects of the turnover of the total category, not just the sales on the individual products therein. Suppliers are expected, indeed in many cases, mandated to only suggest new product introductions, a new planogram or promotional activity if it is expected to have a beneficial effect on the turnover or profit of the total category and be beneficial to the shoppers of that category. The concept was initiated, and is still most commonly found in Grocery (Mass merchandising) retailing, but now also found in other retail sectors such as DIY, Cash and Carry, Pharmacy/Drugstore and even Book retailing.

Category Captaincy

It is commonplace for one particular supplier in a category to be nominated by the retailer as a Category Captain. The Category Captain will be expected to have the closest and most regular contact with the retailer and will also be expected to invest time, effort, and often financial investment into the strategic development of the category within the retailer.

The above is the spiel of text books. In real life or shall I say Retail Life the category captain is what every brand tries to project itself as and fights bitterly with retailers for that bit of extra space for a poster or dangler to be put up.
In such a scenario only the most creative brand is able to hold its own.
The test of a Category Captain is not in being able to get the most communication and shelf space rather its in being the fastest selling and most relevant communicator. Inorder to achieve this target the Brand needs to have some basic skill sets.

Leadership skills
The attributes that you look for in a good leader of men (think Obama ) are the same ones that you look for in a Category leader. e.g.
1) A leader should be able to lead through innovations, new thoughts and foresight – new product features, offers and correctly predicting the future market situations
2) A leader should work for the greater good eschewing his own – even if a Category captain does not have each and every product that forms a part of the category basket that should not stop it from thinking on behalf of the whole category
3) A leader should be able to lead his people to safety in dire times – in times of low sales, recession and other problems a Category Captain has to continue to be a good leader by working out solutions on behalf of the entire category.

I am sharing here some pictures of a category leadership exercise taken by an erstwhile client J&J while working for Ramms.
Challenge:
J&J continues to be the most trusted brand in babycare in India and the challenge was to reinforce the leadership position of the brand while uplifting the look and feel of the entire Babycare category in modern retail. The clear diktat from the retailer was that no brand name should be visible on the communication.
Solution:
By a clever usage of the brand images and colours the brand association was made apparent while the interesting and cute looking headers and side boards added an element of interest in an otherwise dull category.
Since this exercise J&J has come up with many other such activities and competitors have also followed suit with similar activities of their own. However this was the first activity undertaken in this category and hence is considered a Pathbreaker.

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.

Retail Consultant- who the hell is that?

When asked “what do you do?”
I answer that ‘I am a Retail Consultant’. This nearly always fetches me blank stares till I go further and explain that my line of work involves everything from the retail layout to the communication inside a store.
Those who are slightly communication savvy understand this. Those who are not, interpret it as designing Malls and Shops.

This oft faced confusion prompts me to explain what exactly my job is:
A retail consultant is an individual or agency that helps determine a retail strategy for stores or other types of retail businesses. Usually, the goal is to increase sales by driving more people to the store and attracting them to products once there. A retail consultant may deal with promotions, merchandising, store design, location and even some personnel decisions.
Being a retail consultant may seem like a focused task, but in reality it is not. Marketing, promotions, HR, store design and merchandising are all specialized areas. Where a consultant comes in is to be able to tie –up all these specialties in a focused manner which enhances the brand/store experience.

Elementary Queries

What is Retail?

Retail is the art, science and commerce of selling to the end customer.

That sounds very simple doesn’t it? But did you notice I said selling to the end-customer and not just selling?

Now suddenly does it take on a different hue?

Selling can be to anyone. To a distributor or dealer, to a shopkeeper or to a company.
It’s only when you are selling directly to the end customer or consumer does selling become Retail.

You might right now be feeling like saying but ‘that’s elementary by dear Priyanka’.
But hang on a minute isn’t it true that at times the simplest of truths are overlooked in an attempt to get at more complicated and seemingly enormous falsehoods?

So no harm in reiterating the obvious. Infact for those who wish to be or are already linked to the retail scene in any manner I would suggest that this be a mantra they repeat before, during and after every meeting and brainstorming session.

“Retail is the art, science and commerce of selling to the end consumer.”

The reason for being so emphatic about this point is the utter neglect or convenient slotting into stereotypes I witness at every meeting of that one person who is pivotal to the entire retail exercise “THE CUSTOMER”

He/she is nicely fitted into an existing matrix which on the basis of annual income, ownership of a car or AC and age claims to be able to access his/her innermost desires and thoughts.

Now how smart is that?

We are a country of billion plus and growing, then how difficult is it for those racking (as well as wrecking) their brains inside closed rooms is it, to just walk out and speak to a few flesh & blood customers and understand what it is that they really seek in a brand?

The Indian customer has always been quirky; I have personally known people who would preserve Shoppers Stop plastic bags only to be able to carry the merchandise they picked up at Sarojini Nagar’s export reject markets in them.

What’s the point you ask?

The point was the impression it made on the neighbours who assumed the frequent shopping trips were to Shoppers Stop.

The same girl who uses nothing but L`oreal products for her skin and hair also regularly eats pani-pooris at the neighbourhood chaat stall.

The Aunty who pours Ayur shampoo into the empty Sunsilk bottle is known to many. So is the uncleji who keeps Four Square cigarettes in a pack of Marlboros.

And I have met a plumber whose latest mobile phone with touchscreen put me in great discomfort as I tried my best to keep my plain Jane Nokia 6300 out of sight.


So coming back to the root point…please, please go out spend time in the shops, markets and malls….see how buying decisions are made or rejected and talk with the customers. At the risk of never being hired again may I say that the shop floor executive of a brand maybe able to give you more insights on how to successfully reach out to the customer than the GM –Marketing for the same brand.