Retail Dude

We all are aware of how severely the Indian retail industry has been hit by these times of recession, and now the news has dropped in that even the slow and strategic entrant like Bharti Retail, is going to close down around 4-5 of its stores, from the total of 28 stores that it has in states of Panjab and Haryana. Bharti Retail so far has been trying different retail mix models to understand the market better, and as per reports there response in terms of margins have been 40-50% better than the competition on per square feet basis.

News reports have quoted Sunil Mittal suggesting that “We were very clear that there will be a struggle and we have a struggle. You do these experimentation’s in a controlled environment. So, we are only in Punjab, a bit in Haryana and that is it. The fact is if we would have opened 500 stores, we would have had to shut half the stores. That would have been very expensive”

But we at Retail Dude believe that this move is just part of strategy which Bharti Retail is adopting in India, expansion is not always about rapidly opening up stores, but also about closing them at the right time.

- Sarthak

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