What a Birthday present!!

Almost to the day, it has been a year since “An Indian and A Retailer” made its debut. The thoughts of this blog grew into an in-depth, experiential book about Indian Retail, titled “The INDIAN reTALEs”.

All this happened in the space of the past 365 or maybe 366 days!

And on the first birthday of the blog, I hold a physical copy of “The INDIAN reTALEs” and wish a very happy birthday to the blog.

This book has been published by Unicorn Books and is now available for purchase with an online discount of 25% at pustakmahal (dot) com. It would be available at leading book stores over the next couple of weeks.

Please start enquiring at your nearest book store about the book and get your hands on it as soon as possible.

Thanks to everyone who supported, encouraged and motivated me along this journey. Hope you enjoy reading the tales as much as you have this blog.

To be launched soon...

March 20th, 2009 is a memorable day as that is when I started the blog “An Indian and A Retailer”. It was actually started suddenly on a whim and before I knew, it had gained a life and momentum of its own. A whole lot of people saw the blog, wrote to me and commented on the posts. Very soon, it was being quoted by Retail and Strategy consultants during their presentations.

I came to know about the widespread popularity of the blog when one such consultant referred to a post during their presentation regarding supply chain. Several members of the audience were my good friends and ex colleagues. Obviously they wasted no time in calling me up and congratulating me.

The blog has been receiving a steady viewership and the walk-in counter is set to cross the 12,000 mark soon. Indicating that on an average 1,000 odd people view my blog every month. 30, persons a day. Not bad for something I started just like that!

My sincere thanks to all those who have steadily viewed and supported the blog.

This support and motivation was voiced to me by several visitors to the blog in the form of a suggestion. Why not write a book. Their contention was that given the depth and detail of Retail information and knowledge available, why not expand on the same and publish a book. It would reach more people and benefit them.

In June 2009, I started acting on this suggestion and worked on putting a book together while contacting publishers. March 2010, this dream effort is ready to see the light of the day. Just ahead of the first anniversary of this blog.

Presenting - “The Indian reTALEs”

The book should be published shortly and for now the cover and an overview can be viewed on @ unicornbooks (dot) com.

Look forward to a similar support to the book. Please do spread the word; Post on your Facebook profiles, Tweet about it, mail your contacts, etc. Please help propagate the news of “The Indian reTALEs”.

Is it Retailing?

Recently while travelling back to Chennai I was at the airport in Kochi and saw a large number of shops at the domestic terminal. After checking in I decided to explore these shops. What I saw and experienced was an eye opener and on a magnified scale seems to be the problem with most shopping malls.

There were approximately 50 odd shops and most of them were closed. That by itself is OK, given that it was only 7 a.m. But what completely flummoxed me was the sheer repetition and lack of differentiation. I counted 6 odd book shops and the balance were roughly equally divided between Kerala handicrafts, spices, etc. and Kerala Sarees, Apparel, etc.

When I tried finding some differentiation between these similar stores, there were hardly any. Similar or rather the same books, similar packets of banana chips, similar white sarees with designs and so on.

I wonder how these businesses are surviving.

I do not think they differentiate on price because the others would react to any attempts at discounting. Range seems similar. Service might be a differentiation, given that only a few were open so early. Maybe they have devised a staggered timing system where each group of shops opens at different times during the day.

Even then, it seems to be an enormous waste of retail space, inventory and other related investments to create similar shops in a confined environment.

The potential to offer a larger and more diverse range obviously exists. Similarly, I have seen several malls which have focused on getting occupancy instead of ensuring that the right retail mix is ensured for a lasting consumer value proposition.

An airport might still survive with such an approach to retailing with a worse case scenario of reduced income from this area of operation. Whereas a mall which does not ensure an optimum mix will lose out on the long run simply because that is the merchandise mix of a mall and needs as much attention as a Retailer needs to give to their merchandising strategy