Shoppers Stop Ltd owned, CrossWord Bookstores has set its eyes on organized book retailing in India. CrossWord has set itself a target to achieve 15% of the market share of retail books and music sales in India by 2009.
The retail segment of book and music market is at Rs1,500 crores and is growing at a rate of 15%.
Crossword Bookstore currently operates 37 stores and hopes to add 8 more by end of FY07 and reach 100 stores by 2009. Amazon.Com has been a terrific success in the US. I am wondering if it makes any sense to sell music and books in stores especially when the Indian Real Estate prices for commercial retailing are simply unrealistic. Maybe its time for CrossWord to retail books online where consumers have a wider choice of reading reviews before making purchase decisions.