Some months ago I got excited about this japanese Retailer UNIQLO who do things pretty differently including a Robot shop assistant called Wakamuru and some of the whackiest, zanniest ideas in Retailing.
Well, those guys are back in the news again. UNIQLO now have a tie up with China’s largest online shopping portal taobao.com who reportedly have some 100 million online shoppers registered with them. The portal is owned by a the Alibaba Group ( !!) . I did not realise Alibaba was such popular metaphor across that part of Asia as well. Hmmm…
UNIQLO will open their Flagship click and mortar store on Taobao and will get hugely promoted by Alibaba!
Incidentally UNIQLO is the largest fashion retail chain in japan with 800 stores ( there are about as many Coffee Days in India, isnt it ?) and its owned by Fast Retailing co. who also own the European Lingerie brand ‘Princesse Tam Tam’ amongst others.
Its interesting to know that Fast Retailing had unsuccessfully offered a bid of $900 million for Barneys New York department store in 2007.
Amongst their many creative ideas in Fashion Retail, I found a very interesting UNIQLO concept of Container Stores. I like it since it is so relevant for Indian Retail with our street markets, Diwali melas and crazy real estate prices ! The UNIQLO container is hardworking store with strip windows and an external generator for lights and POS. The door and ramp fold on hydraulic struts. The designers for the UNIQLO Containers are LOT-EK
Sharing pic of a UNIQLO ‘Container’ store in New York :
UNIQLO Container Store
Pic source : http://www.psfk.com/2006/10/uniqlo_containe.html
Love the pic ! Describes beautifully the utopia ( and paradox) of luxury retail for most of India.
Source : The International Herald Tribune
I read in the TOI that some chaps just rented out a 133 sq. ft. shop near Safdarjung Road, New Delhi for an astounding Rs 12,09,000 per month. That is a rental of Rs 9,022 per sq ft per month.
This patch of bricks would have costed Rs 10,15,000 in the Fifth Avenue, New York, Rs 9,80,00 per month in Causeway Bay, Hong Kong, Rs. 6,25,000 in Champs Elysees, Paris, Rs. 5,40,000 in Via Montena Pleone, Milan and Between Rs 4,00,000 to Rs 4,50,000 in Grafton Street, Dublin, New Bond Street, London, Ginza in Japan, and Bahnhofstrasse in Zurich.
Just to put things in micro perspective, if the same guys went shopping elsewhere in New Delhi they would have found a nook in natty Khan market at Rs 1,100 per sq ft per month, Rs 800 per sq ft per month in Posh South Ex, and Rs 675 per sq ft per month in Connaught Place.
Whoa ! I love these guys. Whoever they are !
Found this while backing up some old pictures on my laptop! I spotted ‘Gandhi Ji’ a couple of years ago on the fancy Rue La Fayette in Paris.
Imagine a Gandhi Ji’s tandoori chicken happening on an Indian highstreet. God (all of them) forbid !!!
I have been snowed under millions of little things that if added together do not unfortunately add up to ‘work’. But the fact remains that I have been snowed under. For a morose period of time I have wondered if I will ever get this blog to life again. That’s funny since I have got a total of 1.25 readers on the blog anyway ! But that at-least is a Sign of life !
What got me stirring again was something I read today about the Jap fashion retailer Uniqlo. At times when the Japanese economy is bracing recession, Uniqlo it seems is cruising along. What they do well and differently from the rest is stick to a strong and clear cut positioning – simple, modern, cool clothes sold in a minimalist setting with the trademark japanese style service.
Keeping with the ‘modernity’ promise they keep the brand renewed by innovation. The latest are ‘Heat Tech’ range of clothes including thermal underpants that converts moisture to heat ! I bet we could do with those in Delhi this winter !
To launch the Heat Tech range the store had a ‘human’ vending machine distribute free products to visitors - basically a big transparent box with a girl miming robotic vending machine actions. It looks funny but I guess it got them the required attention.
More in store is a cute little Robot store assistant called Wakamuru who blogs and some crazy, quirky Advertising. Check out !
I met a couple of students from a prominent B school yesterday. Graduating in Retail, they had come to discuss placements for the current batch. They asked me the average salary I think freshers could get ( at my small company and the likes) . I thought of an honest number and padded it by 20%. They both gave me the look of disbelief, the kind that says ‘ you can’t be serious’ ! After they had left, I was wondering if I was really out of touch. Last week a student of mine at a B school that I sometimes teach at wrote me an e mail asking me my opinion on the current Jobs scenario and the average CTC that he could expect. After I replied, I never heard back from him.
I spoke with the HR head of a mid size Retail company – she coincidentally called me to find what was happening about jobs at the senior level ! She said, my assessment of average salaries was optimistic and quite correct. So I know I am in touch and we should all know by the end of the next year which was the game is going.
I read yesterday that Reliance Retail will not renew contracts of 2000 contractual employees ! A very senior person at RKHS mentioned to me that most senior staff above a particular CTC have been asked to ease out. We all know what’s happening with Jet and IA. Retail will feel the tremors too.
In the US there has been a spate of closures. Today TOI says that retailer Eddie Bauer has closed 27 shops in the first quarter and plans to close few more by the end of the year. Fashion Bug, Catherines Plus Sizes will close about 150 underperforming stores this year. The Talbots group announced that it will close Talbots Kids and Talbots Mens Concepts by end of the year – in all 78 Talbots stores will close down. Walt Disney said it has also obtained the right to close about 98 Disney Stores in the US. Gap has announced plans to close 85 Old Navy and Banana Republic stores as it continues to struggle to attract customers. Ann Taylor will close 117 stores between 2008 and 2010. A large number of Indian Exporters are suppliers to these brands and the implications for them could be fatal.
Retailers in India, havn’t come to the bridge yet. New formats and expansions are announced every day. The ‘pundits’ predict a growth rate of 30 % for the industry and the forerunners say that the ‘gloom’ around the Retail Industry is false. Touch wood.
The Hermes ‘Plush Horse’ sells at $490 ! Chrissake, that is twenty three thousand Indian rupees !
I understand Nicole Kidman and the likes buy these gifts for babies of Tom Cruise and the likes. What I don’t understand why anyone who is not on Hollywood ( or Bollywood) should buy the Hermes horsey for little kids to feed to their doggies ?!
America’s bust but the Hermes Horsey is still selling, never mind why ! Also proves that the ultra high end of the luxury market is safe and sound in any economy.
Back home, population of high net-worth individuals was estimated at 1,23,000 in 2007. That is up 22.7 % from 2006, making Indians the fastest-growing wealthy population in the world as per FICCI. It is also estimated by an independent Luxury player that there are about 1.6 million households in India earning $100,000 a year.
Earlier this year I read in the Business Standard that Hermes quietly launched their first store in India in Delhi in May this year at the Oberoi’s in partnership with the wife of PRS Oberoi’s grandson Ashok Khanna. Incidently Khanna also owns the celebrated Ananda Spa. Since they launched too quietly for comfort, I wrote to the Hermes guys asking if they indeed have a store in India. I got back a cryptic reply saying “we currently do not have a store in India”.
I am scratching my head now. Did they come or did they go ?
Budhadeb Bhatacharjee is a hero to survive the politics of his state. I do not know much of him but from whatever little I know, I put him in the squeaky clean league of Prime Minister Singh. Coming back to his state, of all the part time help we have had for the last 2 decades of living in Delhi – 90% have been from West Bengal. One has heard from them stories of abject poverty, the despicable state of the small farmer and the farmlands. I empathise entirely when Budha says that making Industries on these farmlands is justified because they are not productive and industries in fact will provide better jobs to many poor people. Even Prabhati my current Bengali help knows that is true.
The next week should decide if Budha’s reforms will get the second big blow if Metro should also move out on the trail of Tata Motors. Metro had planned an investment of Rs 564 crore to open 4 Metro Cash & Carry outlets in Kolkatta employing 2000 people. They were issued the coveted APMC license in 2006 which was valid till March 2008. The license was issued on the grounds that the Metro Cash & Carry business is business-to-business wholesale. The Forward Bloc now feels that the APMC license should not be renewed because several small traders already supply to hotels, restaurants and hospitals, and Metro could hurt their businesses.
Isn’t 2 years a rather long time for such awakening?! Metro Cash & Carry has already invested Rs 140 crore and employed 350 people in its first outlet on Kolkata’s Eastern Metropolitan Bypass, so far. The outlet would now not open if the license is not renewed. Metro is also ready with infrastructure, spread over 100,000 sq ft, on the Eastern Metropolitan Bypass. To add to the injury, the company had to stop construction for eight months based on a legal dispute between farm land owners, the government and themselves !
Chief Minister Budha is driven to a corner and I think he has taken on a lot against himself by going against his political party by instructing the 24 Parganas’ south district magistrate to issue the APMC license to Metro. Metro’s cash and carry outlet in Kolkata falls under the jurisdiction of 24 Parganas.
He has of course stirred the hornet’s nest by doing so and predictably the Forward Bloc ministers have stopped attending office in protest till the chief minister’s letter is withdrawn ! Budhadeb and the State Finance Minister are down on their knees in front of the Forward Bloc to renew the licence.
I am sure everyone involved knows that the Metro Cash & Carry exit means sounding the death knell for foreign investment in West Bengal. Sunday September 28, 2008 is the day of reckoning where the final decision will be taken by the ministers. Till then the its fingers crossed for modern retail!
I was reading a Retail related post about ‘pop up stores’ on a the National Entrepreneurship Network website. (While on NEN – they are co-founded by IIT B; IIM A; SP Jain Institute, Bombay; IBAB, Bangalore and BITS Pilani to help launch new entrepreneurs, and hence thousands of valuable jobs for India. Very noble indeed.)
Their post was about an innovative retail format in the Phillipines called the ‘Palengkenito’, which means ‘mini-market’ in English, The Palengkenito is a mobile grocery store on wheels, developed to bring retail convenience to less-affluent consumers in the Philippines. Specially converted Suzuki minivans are outfitted with a generator, shelving units, food heating elements and a refrigerator. The roving store offers quality pre-packed fresh and processed food, snacks, canned goods, toiletries, and other basic household items in small packages and sachets !
I recall meeting a prospect for a job position last year who had shown me a portfolio of mobile grocery store pictures that he was instrumental in developing – it was either for 6ten or Subhiksha but I am not sure if I remember the name of the chain correctly. Whoever it was, did not take the concept through since I never noticed any mobile grocery stores in Delhi ever after.
The post about Palengkenito got me curious to find out more about a retail concept which just seems tailor made for a country like ours. And just as I wiped the dust of my search I found that a little known man called Asad Shamsi a metal handicrafts exporter, was already selling on wheels for almost an year now in the rural districts of Uttar Pradesh. He calls his Vans -3A Bazaar and it is India’s first mobile retail company!
He has beaten the Big Boys to it by a huge margin. He says that he was inspired by similar retail chains in Europe. He has 5 vans which carry goods worth 2.5 lakhs of rupees everyday from a central warehouse to 700 villages in the JP Nagar district of UP. Since there are only five 3A Bazaar Vans, most of these villages are visited weekly or fortnightly or sometimes even monthly. This suits the villagers just as well since their income is irregular and they do not make large purchases very often. The 3A Bazaar Van is regular event that they wait for and look forward to.
The daily average retail sales of 3 A Bazaar concept are between Rs 8,000 -10, 000 and Mr. Shamsi is already planning to increase the size of his fleet. The Vans look surprisingly natty and I am truly impressed. Asad Shamsi is a man to watch out for in the future of Rural retailing!
