It is truly amazing on how soon Indian retailers have changed their business strategy – from aggressive expansion plans and vision 2010 to closing down non-viable stores and putting on hold all further openings – Courtesy: Global Economic Crisis and Local Liquidity Crunch 🙂
Leisure store chain – Odyssey involved in retailing of Books, Music, Toys, Stationary Cards, Gifts etc for now has withheld all expansion plans. The company currently has 15 large format stores and 23 express outlets spread on 250,000 sft.
Mr. T.S.Ashwin, MD of Odyssey said,
We’d rather grow in cities where we already have a base and and have an established market. The company had lower festive season sales. Instead of the usual 2-3 times the average sales of other months which we see during the season, this year it was just 1.5 times.
In view of falling rentals and realty prices, the company’s management is busy renegotiating rentals and lease signed a year ago. Odyssey has tied up with HPCL to setup stores in Nagpur, Mumbai and Bangalore. The company has also identified 29 metro stations at New Delhi for its Express kiosks.
Odyssey is also toying the idea of Book and Music vending machine project in Chennai and is expected to be launched in couple of months. It is also working on launching music download kiosk where customers can BUY customized music. The concept will be tested in Bangalore, Hyderabad and Chennai within 3 months.
The average ticket size at Odyssey is Rs 500 / month per foot fall.