Just back from spending a family holiday in Mumbai, India after two and a half years and I decided to hit the ground running visiting a few malls and giving the current organised Retail market a review under the lens.
So which places did I visit?: Oberoi Mall in Goregaon, Phoenix Market City in Kurla, Phoenix Mall in Lower Parel and the Reliance Fresh supermarket in Santacruz (West). I also made it a point to do a quick word of mouth review of the big 3 ecommerce websites in India: Flipkart.com, amazon.in and snapdeal.com.
Let’s get the websites out of the way first. All the three websites offer everything under the sun with Flipkart.com having the slight edge when it comes to presentation and the fashion range they carry (thanks to Myntra.com).
The general feedback from friends and family though is that snapdeal.com has been caught out a few times in the area of after sales customer service. I personally found Amazon.in offering the cheapest prices and seamless delivery when comparing items generally found on all the three websites. If it is a consistent experience that you are after then Flipkart.com has the edge.
But it was refreshing to see how much the ecommerce market has moved in India since my last long visit. Buying online comes naturally to today’s teens and youth and the space is full of new ideas and models being trialled out currently. With plenty of investors funds available entrepreneurs should take care to build ideas with a solid revenue generation model and avoid directly copying ideas from the West without tailoring for the myriad combinations that needs to be considered for the Indian market. And I would really love to see an Indian startup making big at the world stage aka Alibaba.
Now moving on to the brick and mortar organised retail. The malls generally have a similar model to the West wherein there are anchor department stores which bring the footfall into the malls and a number of brand signature stores that sit alongside it. The customers are spoilt for choice as every brand conceivable – American, British, European, Asian and home grown have a fair amount of presence and representation.
Here is the challenge though: Unlike in the West where Department stores have invested heavily in creating their own private brands and designer lines, the Department stores rely heavily in having in-store concessions of the very same brands that are being sold in individual stores. There seems to be a lack of clarity and strategy for the big department stores to grow their business organically through solid promotions of their own brands.
And in a similar breath there is a lack of clarity with many of the boutique brands that want to scale and grow quickly through opening franchise stores or own stores without giving thought to cannibalisation and demographics. I found instances where a 2-3 stores of the same brand where within 50-100 metres vicinity to each other.
The stores are still finding their feet with the range they carry and especially international brands such as Mothercare and Debenhams have got their pricing strategy incorrect. There were several instances where items has the UK price printed with the India price printed below – and the India price was a premium to the UK price! Can’t imagine why an item either manufactured or sourced from India or the sub-continent has to be more expensive to buy than in the UK.
A few brands do have got it right though. M&S had their strategy all over the place when they started off in India and they have made a complete turnaround. The range is localised and the pricing is just about right. An interesting thing a heard from a few people is that the M&S brand inhibits prospective customers from walking through the door – a clever branding and marketing strategy is required to get the footfalls to increase. The Zara store looked well organised and had the right blend of range and price – although the staffs were being pushy.
The runaway success though has to be Forever21. The store is big and vibrant, the range extensive and the price point spot on for fast fashion. Just as you would find everyone carrying a Selfridges bag if you are in Oxford Street, I could sense everyone wanted to be seen carrying a ‘yellow’ Forever21 bag! Forever21 has got their branding, range, demographics and pricing spot on in India and the footfall in the stores tell its own story.
So that was a quick round up of India Retail 2.0 – now in its trial and maturity phase. The question is how to keep the instore experience vibrant enough to not fall into the trap that Western Retailers have got it into and keep the stores relevant!