There is one thing I like about the Indian retailers is their willingness to experiment and improve to give what the ultimate King [consumer] needs. Pioneers like Kishore Biyani from Future Group, Shoppers’ Stop, Vishal Retail, Spencers’ etc are chanting a new mantra – Rightsizing – which involves trimming the store size and getting rid of slow moving categories replaced by specialty formats or shop-in-shop model.
Future Group, Executive Director Rakesh Biyani said,
A shop-in-shop approach helps increase revenue per sq ft. It enables best utilisation of space and is a good way to do away with excess space and reduce space for categories which are not doing well. This approach provides consumers with a wider choice. We have a similar model for the Pantaloons outlets in the East and may replicate it elsewhere.
We had reported earlier that Shoppers Stop tied up with Cafe Coffee Day for manging their F&B outlets. Apart from the F&B space, the other most prominent areas where RightSizing is happening is where customers connect retailers – cosmetics, personal care products, fine jewellery and salons.
Spencers Retail marketing head Samar S Sheikhawat said,
In a slowdown, shop-in-shops are the best way to leverage domain knowledge of speciality players and maximise returns. Such outlets will be set up through our group’s speciality formats like Books & Beyond, Mera World, Music World as well as in collaboration with other players.
Vishal retail has done similar exercise in 35 of its stores.