Retail India Business - News, Views and Much More

Retail India: Provogue hits the Ramp

Provogue has finally announced its ambitious plans. Provogue plans to setup mega stores retailing a wide array of fashion related products. The new store would be up by Diwali at Mumbai.

Retail India: Pantaloon Goes Grocery Shoping

Pantaloon has decided to float yet another couple of companies. This time its betting in the Food Sector. The Board has cleared two new ventures - PAN India Restaurants and Pantaloon Food Product (India). This should have been in the pipeline with the acquistion of Galaxy recently.

The aproved investments is of Rs. 9 Crores and Rs. 5 Crores respectively for these two new ventures.

Retail India: Indian Wal-Mart

Well maybe I should have been a little quicker in writing about India's very own Adaptation of Wal-Mart. For quite sometime everyone in the industry has been watching keenly how our very own Wal-Mart has been shaping up. None other than Pantaloon Retail India Ltd.

Pantaloon is sure to be a very well documented story of growth in various formats and size in such a small time. Today Pantaloon is a 52 strong store in 19 cities a turnover projected at US$ 250 million.

There is a good write-up on the same on the BusinessWeek website by Manjeet Kripalani. You could read the full article at: http://www.businessweek.com/magazine/content/05_14/b3927059.htm?chan=gb

Retail India: Blaupunkt Opens Brand Store

Blaupunkt has opened its first Retail Brand Shop at Mumbai. Blaupunkt already commands over 20% market-share in the organized players. This new store would enhance the customer experience and move the customers away from the dingy outlets and dealers where its currently retailed without any customer experience.

Retail India: Lladro gets Desi

Spanish Figurines Lladro has launched a series of Indian God Figurines. The company projects a turnover of Rs. 50 Crore from the current Rs. 20 Crore. The company has earmarked a good portion for local advertising and has a clear defined strategy of its segmentation by targeting the premium customers rather than trying to hit the mass-market.

It makes more sense this way. The product should never be available at a very discounted price just because of a different market. The global pricing and target audience should be maintained. Else all the money spent on a good collection over the years would just detoirate in value.

Retail India: Guess joins Planet Sports

Fashion Brand "Guess" has announced its entry into India through Planet Sports. Planet Sports has been bringing in a line of international Fashion Brands including Marks & Spencers to the Indian Market.

Baazee Turns Desi (India) http://www.ebay.in/

Well I just got a mail announcing the Official Launch of Ebay.in (Formerly Baazee.com).

Although most of the look and feel is the same, there appears to be a minor change in the layout. Only disturbing thing is since they are merging all the data, namely the user-ids, if someone already has registered before you for the same id on ebay then your user-id from Baazee is changed automatically or you can sign up for a new one.

Retail India: Spar Eyes India

Spar International, the largest international food retail chain in the world with nearly 16,000 stores in 34 countries across the globe marks India as a key driver in its expansion. With thier limited presence and experience in Mumbai, Spar is already convinced of the oppurtunity in India.

Retail India: Arcus shuts shop

India's answer to home improvements stores like Ikea has finally shut shop. Arcus with a presence in Gurgaon and Mumbai have finally believed to have wound up operations although the reasons are not known. The Mumbai store was closed earlier last year with high operational costs and low conversions from the Phoenix Mall. Now it has closed the only other store at Gurgaon. No official comment is out on the website either at http://www.arcusstores.com/index.asp

Guess I'll just wait till Ikea comes calling for a better shoping experence.

Retail India: Fabmall & Trinethra enter Chennai

Fabmall and Trinethra have started looking out for properties in and around Chennai. Guess the Chennai Bastallion of FoodWorld and Subhiksha is all set for a new Price War and Competition.