India Retail News.

• Select Citywalk, a high end mall in Saket, New Delhi plans to offer concessional taxi services to its customers. They also plan to launch a loyalty programme.
• Unitech will start bus service to fetch customers to the mall from Jan-2008. They also plan to launch a Gym in Noida Mall along with Coffee Shop and Hypermarket. Goal is to convert the consumers of Gym into customers of Coffee shop to have breakfast or shop at hypermarket.
  
• Parsvnath Developers is toying with the idea of having banks, payment centers for telecom services, insurance, medical stores and health clinics.
• Central Mall in Bangalore charges you for the parking which can be adjusted against shopping at any outlet including Cafeteria
• Ambience Mall in Guragon is planning to reimburse customers who might have paid toll on their way to the mall
  

Shoe Factory, owed to its value for money line-up proposition, has been very well around the country. Going forward, we would rapidly expand the brand and intend to have as many as 80 Shoe Factory outlets on PAN-India basis. Our vision is to become a Rs 200 crore company by 2009-10.

TGKF brand has been very well received within India, which motivated us to st shop abroad. We are quite aggressive on our expansion in the overseas market and are targeting to open atleast 10 restaurants in the region by the end of next year.

We are looking at high-end stores which will be bigger and more lavish. It will be a whole new experience for consumers looking at expensive jewellery.

The critical area of growth would be retail expansion. We will look at getting a robust and expanded distribution going. We will also scale up brand equity. Although we have solit foundation already, there is scope to grow our business.

Footprint has a 20:80 ratio of private label footwear to other domestic and international brands. The company has created footwear private labels such as Viviana, Tosca, Mancini and Monza for occasions ranging from casual, formal to party and sports.

We are ready to take in regional players who want to join us. These could be players who have products related to our category such as mobile stores and IT related chains. We will maintain the identity of our acquired retail brand. In fact in places where we have large formats we will add their brands and dedicate separate floors to retail their products.

Concept stores give consumers a complete brand experience and convey the values and lifestyle imagery of the brand. These large concept stores bring all the images of the brand unlike large retail outlets which just stock and sell our products.

The opportunities in the export of food category is immense as India has the advantage of producing organically grown food products and has vast agricultural diversity. We plan to source food products like nuts, spices, fruits & vegetables, basmati rice and diary products. Suppliers have to give us the volume we need for exports. Once suppliers become comfortable with the METRO way of doing business we will find opportunities for them to supply into the entire METRO sales network which operates in 31 countries.

We need to grown. In the long term we see India as a potentially very-very large market. The problem is local retailers' operations are relatively small in comparison with foreign players.

A lot of appareal sitting in our stores and exports have been inspired by Italian designers. Now this can be consolidated further with the possiblity of a co-branding initiative. The collaborator can provide technical assistance.

All this time we have not leveraged the Harmony brand because the Indian consumers are fickle with regard to furnishing fabrics. They are more led by colors, designs and discounts not necessarily by the quality of the products. We are currently evaluating on how to build volume into this business.

• You have to have 700-1,000 sft of prime retail area in malls or upmarket place and must be willing to invest Rs 25+ lakhs.
• Do not won retail space ? No problem. You should be willing to invest Rs 30+ lakhs and willing to be a strong team player to grow the business

We are seriously looking at youth and women as a business. There is a good market for lifestyle dressing and we forsee significant growth by addressing the youth market.

• Just Cuts - Salon
• Greggio - Silverware
• Bezel - Watches
• Gitanjali Jewellery
• Gitanjali Fashion - Apparels
• Gitanjali Lifestyle

Mr. Gaurav.M, MD Gitanjali Lifestyle said,

The stores will be spread over an area of 5,000 sft to 15,000 sft, the luxurymall will come over an area of 80,000 sft to 150,000 sft. We will be spending around Rs 150 crores overall, which will be sourced through amix of internalaccurals and debt.

In all we are planning to setup 150 stores or so in the coastal region and parts of Rayalasema and 150 more in the rest of the state by the end of this financial year. In Karnataka we are starting from Mysore.

India is a very important market for VF corporation. With the launch of Wrangler Girl the intent is to communicate with the Indian girl consumer who knows exactly what she wants both in terms of fashion and style.

To start with, we are planning to open five stores in the south after which we will plan our PAN-India rollout.

• Books and Beyond
• Music World
• RPG Cellucom
• Spencer's Retail - Hypermarket, Super, Daily and Fresh.

Spencer's is actively seeking business partners for its various ventures and you may touch base with the company. We will open an exclusive Business Opportunities section soon.