Retail Dude

Here is a great opportunity to grab all the insights and tools you need to climb to the top. It is for those of you who are serious about making your mark in Retail Management and serious about getting results. Here are a few guides specific to retail success. Have a look at this “Success in Retail” bundle by DMSRetail and you will realize this is better than squeezing out retail logics from management fundas as most Retails Institutes still do!!

There is something for all of us (Professionals, Strugglers & Aspirants) in this success bundle. Let me go Profile by profile though I firmly believe no categorization in learning should be made. In retail there is a new challenge every day.

Retail Buyers, Merchandisers, Category Managers, and M.I.S people; the biggest nightmare for you all I’m sure is Retail Maths. DMSRetail has developed a Retail Math eBook for retail management. This book will give you all of the information you need to start using retail math with confidence. You will understand how to make the Common and not so common retail metrics, their formulas and calculations and what to do with the answers you get.

Store Managers, Floor Managers, and Category Managers; challenge is planning and developing a winning culture in the store. There are books which help you plan your store, design planograms, manage work hours, manage manpower and business.

Area Sales Managers (ASMs), Region Sales Managers (RSM’s), and Retail Operation Managers (ROMs); still wondering how to staff your stores and train them to achieve sales targets and goals.

Retail Recruiters and Human Resource Managers; always wondering how to evaluate retail employee performance and skills and hone them further. The book named “I succeed” employee evaluation system will help you identify employee issues, Set a truly motivational program in motion, Understand how recognition of employees’ strengths can benefit your business and confirm that your current organization is still working for you.

Customer relationship Managers (CRMs) and Customer Care Associates (CCAs); Customer service is never enough, it never seems to satisfy. Anyone who reads the ‘Retail Customer Service Fundamentals’ guide will know how to create a proper shopping experience at every touch point with the customer.

Retail Strategists and Retail Analysts; do you want a formula to step up your sales by 20% in next 6 months. Quantitative information will help retailers understand their customer potential and qualitative intelligence will improve marketing, messaging and targeting strategies. Combined, this intelligence offers retailers a data-driven strategy to increase profitability.

So guys if you are interested you can get hold of this DMS Retail Success guides by ordering online or even at some chosen book stores. Go ahead and benefit.

Happy Reading!!

-Roli

 Email  Print 1 Dude Commented »

Before proceeding to the main topic let me build up some context. I will first of all like to define what touch point means for a retailer.  Actually touch points are the instances of interactions between retailer and customer/potential customer. But take these interactions into broader meaning, because in retail if a window display attracts a customer to a store, this eventually comes under an interaction. So keeping retail business in mind I categorized these touch points in two broad categories –

1.       Active touch Points

2.       Passive touch points

Now the active touch points are those where a retailer/associate/customer facing group has a face-to-face/phone/email interaction. But a passive touch point includes advertisement/windows display/store atmosphere/word of mouth etc but these also have equal amount of influence on customer as compared to active touch points. Further these two touch points can be divided into “Managed touch points” like store atmospheres and the customer facing group these things a retailer can managed according his own wish and can also manipulate things , but there are some “Non-managed touch points” like word of mouth on which the retail don’t have any control.

But now in this era of technology one more dimension has been added to the touch points for the retailers. Now we can classify touch points for the retailers into –

1.       Traditional touch points

2.       Digital touch points

Traditional touch points are the touch points which include store display ambience etc, customer facing group, and TV/banners/Radio advertisements. But the digital touch points are those which involve websites/email/mobile SMS/MMS or Mobile applications.

Internet is here for many years now and maximum retailers now know the potential of web and are using it as a good touch point for their customers. This not only increases the reach of a retailer but also facilitates customers in many ways most prominent of them is convenience and time. But with the evolution of smartphones and the launch of much talked and promoted iphone this interaction/touch point reached a new height about which I will talk in my next post till then happy reading guyzz ………

-Prateek Katiyar

 Email  Print Make a Comment »

“Bollywood” is one of the biggest entertainment phenomena that rules India.

Last year Future Group came up with merchandise ‘inspired’ by Saawariya, which reflected the colour theme, tone, background, ambience and concepts of the movie, specially-created Saawariya merchandise was available across categories such as clothing, home, bed, bath (well Ummm..!!) , linen & beauty accessories for women and male apparel.

“Om Shanti Om” apart from a merchandising deal with Shoppers’ Stop (which involved almost 50-50 revenue sharing), also signed up with brands like Videocon, Nokia (which was the mobile-phone maker’s first such tie-up in Bollywood), cosmetics company Maybelline (Deepika Padukone is the brand endorser), and SIA Jewelry. These are just not brand associations but carry a lot of endorsement value with them both for the Actors and the products.

Well Bollywood merchandising is not a new concept really, yet, what is interesting is the scale that it has been/will be taken to.

From just one-off examples, which had a few corners dedicated to a particular movie’s merchandise, we will now see entire Bollywood Experience zones come up at retail stores.

Future Group and Percept have entered into a joint venture through which an initial investment of Rs 50 crore will create Bollywood cafes, theme parks, walk-ins and even museums at Future group’s retail outlets. Though the project seems to be going slow from what we see right now but still the business obviously seems to have become quite profitable for companies to create special experience zones to pull in more customers.

So, while apparels, accessories for men, women and children have generally been the criteria for forming separate zones till now, we have a new one henceforth- Bollywood.

There will be enough good news that bollywood’s association with retail will also give us in near future. Thanks to the desperate efforts of retailers to market their product differently and make it more attractive to buy. More recently for those who have seen “Ghajini” must have noticed Aamir khan wearing Van Heusen, a Madura Garments brand (which crafted a special range for the movie) and sporting Xylus(Titan) watches off and on.

 Ghajini gives you another reason to rejoice. The pic above is actually a campaign currently running and one which you can avail right away. You can get the ticket money reimbursed on the bill value of your purchase from the Van Heusen Ghajini collection. So for those who have still not seen the movie go ahead, it is paisa wasool all the wayJ!!  For those who are luckily still carrying the ticket, its still worth discount on your favourite shirt. I’m sorry for giving the information late for those who have thrown the tickets.

Happy Shopping the Bollywood Ishtyle !!

- Roli

 Email  Print 4 Dudes Commented »

As per the polls, majority of people i.e. 67% thinks that Retail Destinations like Malls, Hyper Market, Multiplexes, Food Courts etc are not secured. People feel that retailers are not having check and it is very easy for anyone to carry anything inside. They feel that retailers are only concerned about shoplifting and they are ignoring other security aspect.  

19% believe that these places are secured as there is tight security. We can see that security has been tightening in multiplexes after the blast which took place once. A minority of 5% feel that these places are secured as movements are tracked through CCTV. But there are various dead places which CCTV doesn’t cover and some places like changing room, wash rooms etc where CCTV can’t be used. Even in recent Taj Mahal case CCTV are helping after the attack only.

A good chunk i.e. 14% are confused that whether these places are secured or not.

Poll 0010: Do you think that charging for home delivery will impact kirana stores?

- Team : RetailDude

 Email  Print 1 Dude Commented »

Consumers are now avoiding visits to malls for their grocery shopping’s in order to reduce their impulse purchases.Rather they are switching back to mom-n-pop (Kirana) shops. This has resulted into increase of demand and pressure on them. Kirana stores are not able to meet the demand for home deliveries of consumers. Typical kirana stores are getting almost 200-250 calls daily for home delivery. So, in order to meet their demands, kirana stores in Mumbai have decided to charge extra for home delivery and employ more delivery boys. According to them, it will help them to deliver goods in time and retain their loyal customers.

“Due to the current financial situation where everybody is seen trying to save, we too want to tighten our budget and raise extra to provide for delivery services,” says Chandrakant Gala, secretary of the Bombay Suburban Grain Dealers Association.

But generally customers prefer kirana stores because of the unique services like credit and free home delivery. So, I just hope that by doing so they don’t loose on their customers again.

Some kirana stores had already started charging for delivery. They are charging Rs. 10 for each order below Rs. 500 whereas they are delivering orders above Rs. 500 for free. And they have not seen any negative reaction from the customers, so hopefully it may work.

- Rajeev Damani

 Email  Print 1 Dude Commented »

Hello Readers,

- Retail Dude Team

 Email  Print Make a Comment »