Videocon is all set to roll out GSM mobile services in 100 cities in the next 100 days and is targeting 10 million subscribers by 2014. Videocon Telecommunication Ltd (VTL) has been recently rechristened to Videocon Mobile Service and is a subsidiary of the $2.5 bn consumer durables giant Videocon Group.

Videocon is one of the eight new operators who have received UAS licence for 15 telecom circles to provide mobile services. The company will tie-up with ‘Panet M’ (a music retailer) and ‘Next’ (a consumer durables retail chain) to sell its GSM services.

The company plans to use its extensive dealer network of over 10,000 dealers to reach potential customers. The company’s will use it’s already in place network of dealers and retail stores in consumer durables, DTH and electronics to scale up rapidly.

Related Posts

No related posts were found, so here's a consolation prize: Reliance Retail Unveils India’s Largest Consumer Electronic Store.

The George at Asda supermarket label will tomorrow unveil a permanent 100 day “no quibble” quality guarantee on its entire range of clothing in what it sees as a bid to halt the rise of “throwaway” fashion. If customers are not completely satisfied with the quality of any item bought from the supermarket range, they will be entitled to a full refund regardless of how many times it may have been washed or worn.

Asda says that unlike the M&S returns policy, which has been cut back twice in the past four years despite strong customer backlash, its new policy demonstrates its continued commitment to providing affordable quality clothing that is made to last.

Last spring M&S reduced the maximum time period for returns from 90 days to 35, to a storm of criticism from shoppers. It insisted that the vast majority of people returning goods take them back within 28 days, and that two-thirds do so within two weeks. George says the latest move follows a trial to its policy on returns of school uniforms launched last July. Any customer who bought a uniform was given the chance to return it within 100 days if they were not completely satisfied with the quality. A total of £9m of school uniform was bought as part of the trial but only £900 was returned and exchanged.

Fiona Lambert, brand director at George, said: “Even though officially it’s the end of the recession, the attitudes we have developed towards being less wasteful are here to stay.

“Although we all want to ‘make do and mend’, the reality is that the busy Asda mum just doesn’t have time. The George 100 day quality guarantee now means that our customers should be just as happy with a George garment after washing and wearing as the day they bought it.”

She added: “We are in a new era of retailing where customers’ perceptions of value are not solely based on price but how long the item will last.”It was hoped the new policy – due to be unveiled in store today (Mon) – would help encourage more shoppers to visit the stores.

Related Posts

1. Asda’s webcams give customers glimpse behind scenes
2. Asda slips up on banana price war

Aditya Birla Retail Limited (ABRL), the retail arm of the Aditya Birla Group, aims to be an USD 2.5-billion entity by 2017-18, a top company official said. “We aim to become an USD 2.5-billion entity by 2017-18. The growth will be driven by opening new stores, launching private labels and closing unviable stores, among other initiatives,” Aditya Birla Retail’s CEO, Thomas Varghese, told PTI here.

“In the next one-two years, our focus will be on consolidation and getting us to profitability. Our focus will be on profitability of the existing network rather than to grow the network,” he said. “We will be opening 12 hypermarket stores every year at an investment of nearly Rs 18-crore per store, spread across 55,000-75,000 sq ft. This year, our stores will come up in places like Delhi (May), Hyderabad (June), Surat, Pune and Nashik, among others,” Varghese said.

“Besides, we plan to open 70-100 supermarket stores every year at an investment of nearly Rs 50-60-lakh per store, spread across 2,500-2,800 sq ft pan-India,” he said. The company currently has 632 supermarkets and six hypermarkets under the brand ‘MORE’ and ‘MORE Megastore’, respectively.

The company also plans to close down unviable supermarket stores this fiscal, Varghese said, adding, “in FY 10, the company closed down about 55-60 odd stores across Mumbai, Pune, Delhi, Punjab, Haryana, Gujarat and in the south. The closures in the south are less as compared to the north.”

“If the business is not profitable then it does not make any sense to continue with it. Stores are closed due to several reasons including high rentals, poor locations, poor catchments, infrastructure issues like roads dug up, etc. In Mumbai and Pune, the predominant reason for closure is high rentals,” Varghese said.

On the company’s IPO plans, Varghese said, “it is on our radar but not at this juncture. We are definitely open to an IPO but it will happen when we are closer to profitability. We are not thinking about it now.” The company expects revenues of Rs 1,450-1,500-crore this fiscal (FY 10). The company closed FY 09 at Rs 1,130-crore. “We are targeting a growth of 25-30 per cent in FY 11,” Varghese said.

Related Posts

1. Aditya Birla Retail speeds up, to open one hypermarket a month

After a phase of consolidation, billionaire Micky Jagtiani-owned Max Hypermarkets, which operates Spar-branded superstores, plans to expand its presence to new geographies and open 25 hypermarkets by 2012. This will result in a 10-fold increase in the company’s retail space, from 120,000 sq ft currently to 1.2 million sq ft.

Managing director Viney Singh said the company is expecting revenues to rise proportionately, from Rs 150 crore currently, to Rs 1,250 crore by 2012. The company, currently, operates three large-format stores, two in Bangalore and one in Hyderabad, and is set to open its flagship property, a 90,000 sq ft store, in Bangalore next week.

Micky Jagtiani, who controls the Landmark Group, one of West Asia’s largest retail chains, owns fashion retail chain LifeStyle and Max Hypermarkets in India. Max is the licencee for the Spar franchise in India. A Dutch brand, Spar International, is one of the world’s largest retailer of food, with presence in over 33 countries.

“We will now open 6-7 stores each year through 2012. These are all large-format stores with an average size of 50,000 sq ft,” Mr Singh said.

India’s organised retail industry has been treading cautiously after many players had to shelve aggressive expansion plans as poor consumer sentiment slowed sales through 2008 and 2009. At least one player “Subhiksha” went bankrupt while another “Vishal Retail” is going through a corporate debt restructuring process.

Resurgent sales in the first months of 2010 have inspired greater confidence among large retailers such as Reliance Retail, Future Group and Spencer Retail, which have variously forged joint ventures, rejigged top management and undertaken other initiatives in a sign that the $37-billion industry might be gradually gaining momentum once again.

Max’s Singh said the company is investing Rs 400 crore, of which, about Rs 250 crore will be equity and the rest debt, to fund the expansion. Max Hypermarkets will open 6-7 stores each year till 2012. While most of the stores will be in tier-2 cities in south India, such as Mangalore, Mysore, Vishakhapatnam, Vijayawada, and Coimbatore, the company will also be opening large stores in cities such as Mumbai, Pune, Chennai and New Delhi.

In many new malls opening in these cities, Max has signed on as an anchor client. “Being a hypermarket, we are naturally an anchor client for malls,” Mr Singh said, adding that his company works on a revenue sharing basis with mall owners. “It varies obviously, but on an average, the cost of occupancy works out to be 3-4% of revenues,” Mr Singh said. Rent and salaries are typically the largest cost overheads for retail operations.

Related Posts

1. Spencer’s to open 15 Large stores, invest Rs 100 crore
2. Aditya Birla Retail speeds up, to open one hypermarket a month
3. Portico to open 20 EBOs, 100 shop-in-shops by 2011

India is ranked among the top two markets for Coca-Cola last quarter. CNBC-TV18’s Tanvi Shukla and Avni Raja find that the key reason for this growth has been the company’s new focus on modern retail.  T Krishnakumar, CEO, Hindustan Coca-Cola Beverages, says, “We are concentrating and investing in modern retail ahead of the curve.”

That’s Coca-Cola India’s mantra for ensuring the high levels of growth that it has been registering. So, the beverage giant has started conducting what it calls top-to-top meetings between its top managements and the CEOs of modern retail chains.

“We are focusing on the backend to make our products available in their full assortment is not easy because the organised retail is spread all over the country and we need top ensure that there is right amount of forecasting, servicing and logistics in the system,” Krishnakumar added.

This strategy seems to be working. The Indian business registered the second highest growth globally for Coke in the last quarter. The company has seen 20-25% improvement in terms of service levels to the customer in terms of availability of products on shelf.

But not all FMCG players follow this strategy. For most FMCG players, modern retail still contributes only a small chunk to their business. Thomas Varghese, CEO, Aditya Birla Retail, says, “Our objective is to work with as many top 20-30 FMCG companies and have a good collaborative relationship with them. It is not that easy, that is why I said there are a number of progressive CEOs who know what is going to be the future.”

Coca-Cola is one of those few that have taken the initiative. But experts says, as modern retail’s contribution climbs from the current 7-8% to more for FMCG players, the shift in focus in expected to come through.

Related Posts

No related posts were found, so here's a consolation prize: UK is a hotbed of IT retail sales jobs.

U.S. retailers posted their best monthly sales performance since just before the recession started in 2007, as lean inventories meant they did not need to resort to steep discounts. The February results are the latest indication that consumers are coming out of hibernation, although many of the largest retailers do not report monthly sales data.

Three-quarters of the 28 retailers in the Thomson Reuters index beat expectations. Sales could have been even better, but record-setting snow in much of the eastern part of the country curbed gains, retailers said. “We’re going on four or five months here of continuous incremental growth,” said Janet Hoffman, global managing director of Accenture’s Retail practice. “It’s not breakaway spending, but I think that there is enough evidence to tell us that the consumer is happy to be back in the marketplace shopping.”

Even retailers in sectors that have struggled in the past year, like department stores, were able to beat expectations. Macy’s said sales at stores open at least a year increased 3.7 percent in February, and Dillard’s reported a 2 percent rise. Teen apparel retailer Abercrombie & Fitch Co, another long-time laggard, posted a surprise 5 percent increase in same-store sales instead of the 6.9 percent decline analysts on average expected.

“Retailers have really done a great job of limiting their inventories, so they weren’t stuck with a lot of stuff that they had to drastically mark down,” said Ken Perkins, president of Retail Metrics. The Standard & Poor’s Retail Index closed up 1.3 percent on Thursday, its highest level since December 2007, while the S&P 500 was little changed. Since the start of February, the retail index has risen 7.5 percent, outpacing a 2.8 percent gain for the S&P 500.

Top gainers included Abercrombie, whose shares rose 14.6 percent; fellow teen retailer Zumiez, up 10 percent; and Family Dollar Stores Inc, up 8.1 percent after the low-priced chain raised its quarterly earnings forecast. February, typically the slowest sales month of the year, also benefited from weak comparisons with the year-earlier month, when consumers reined in spending during the depth of the recession, shopping only for deeply discounted merchandise. Macy’s same-store sales would have risen 5 percent without the snow, Chief Executive Officer Terry Lundgren said in a statement.

The Thomson Reuters same-store sales index rose 4 percent in February, compared with expectations for a 2.9 percent rise and a year-earlier drop of 4.7 percent. This year’s results were the best for February since 2005, when same-store sales rose 5.7 percent, according to Thomson Reuters. February sales also showed the biggest gain since November 2007, a month before the recession started, said Michael Niemira, chief economist for the International Council of Shopping Centers. ICSC’s same-store sales index rose 3.7 percent in February, and the group forecast a 2.5 percent increase for March.

March sales will benefit from an earlier Easter than last year. But the U.S. economic recovery is still tentative. U.S. consumer confidence sagged to a 10-month low in February amid worries about unemployment and government gridlock, which could also cap any rebound in the retail sector. At the same time, shares of many retailers have had a strong run in the past month and are getting expensive, said Wall Street Strategies analyst Brian Sozzi.

“The discount sector’s stocks still have value, but specialty retailers are coming to the point where they are fully valued – you want to pull back on some of these stocks,” Sozzi said. “The second half of 2010 will be tough because it will be hard to keep improving their gross and operating margins.”

Teen retailers like Abercrombie and Zumiez were a surprise bright spot as younger customers seemed to take to spring fashion. Sales of denim were strong at chains like Buckle Inc and Wet Seal, helping a sector that had been expected to lag. Gap Inc also surprised as same-store sales rose 3 percent, compared with expectations for a 1.8 percent increase.

Lower-priced retailers also fared well, with Target Corp posting a 2.4 percent increase, compared with analysts’ expectations for a 1 percent gain. TJX Cos Inc had a 10 percent rise, beating an 8.9 percent estimate. Family Dollar posted a same-store sales rise of 3.6 percent for the quarter that ended February 28 and said it expected earnings for the period to beat analysts’ estimates.

Snowfall at times shut down cities including Philadelphia, Baltimore and Washington last month. Even in Manhattan, heavy storms on February 10 and February 25 made it difficult to get around. That may have limited traffic in stores, but the higher selling prices lifted sales, analysts said. And the snow missed the three-day weekend that included Valentine’s Day and Presidents Day, key shopping days in February.

Monthly sales data provide a snapshot at certain retailers but are less reliable as a measure of the economy as a whole, since industry leader Wal-Mart Stores Inc and other major companies like Best Buy Co Inc and Amazon.com do not report sales figures each month.

Related Posts

1. Improvement in retail sales despite wary consumers
2. Retail Sales results for January brighten recovery picture in America
3. Target Q4 profits top expectations, Like for Like sales up 0.6%

Aditya Birla Retail plans to invest Rs 1,800 crore over the next eight years to scale up its ‘More’ hypermarkets across the country. It looks to open one store per month at an investment of around Rs 20 crore per store, said Thomas Verghese, CEO of the company, on Wednesday at the launch of a hypermarket at Thane.

Aditya Birla Retail, which has 632 supermarkets and six hypermarkets, plans to increase the number of `More Megastore’ stores to 100, while shutting down some loss-making super markets. “We are focusing on our hypermarket format where we can introduce more stock keeping units (SKUs) to churn out more profits from large shop formats,” Mr Verghese added.

Currently, ‘More’ has 13 in-house (private labels) power brands in various categories with 320 SKUs in the FMCG segment. Hypermarkets have a minimum size of 50,000 sq ft compared to super market’s 2,500 sqft. “As a part of our cleaning up process, we are planning to wind up quite a few number of supermarket stores which are not profitable,” Mr Varghese said.

According to a report published by PricewaterhouseCoopers (PWC) on retail and consumer industry in association with Retail Association of India (RAI), the country’s retail sector is worth $350 billion and growing at around 15% annually.

Related Posts

1. Aditya Birla Retail to become $ 2.5-bn entity by FY18, IPO on the Radar
2. Jaipan to open 200 retail stores starting next month
3. Spar hypermarkets in overdrive, to open 25 hypermarkets by 2012

The country’s apex industry lobby, the Federation of Indian Chambers of Commerce and Industry (FICCI) has a new man in charge. The vice chairman and managing director of Bharti Enterprises has taken over as the president of FICCI and one of the top agenda for Rajan Mittal, younger brother of Sunil Mittal, during his term would be to see through the opening of the retail sector.

Rajan Mittal, president of FICCI, said, “It’s an important area of concern for us, and we will push for necessary policy reforms on this front.” It’s all the more important for Rajan, as he is directly overseeing the Bharti group’s foray in the retail business. In addition, FICCI will also push for private sector participation in the areas of supply chain and cold storage.

“High food inflation in the country can be attributed to huge wastages and pilferages, which occur on account of loopholes in the supply chain infrastructure. With the participation of private sector, these pilferages can be plugged,” Rajan said. Meanwhile, Bharti’s partner in the backend cash & carry business, Walmart, has already shown its interest in taking over Central Warehousing Corporation’s warehouses on a PPP mode. While any policy reform on this front, will be based on the argument of bringing down food prices by curbing wastages and pilferages, it will also be in sync with Walmart’s larger business interests.

When Sunil Mittal was president of CII, he aggressively pursued opening of the retail sector but his efforts backfired and evoked nationwide opposition, not only to FDI in retail, but even to domestic corporate houses. Now, will his younger brother, in charge of FICCI, be able to engineer a policy change without being politically incorrect?

Related Posts

1. Retail giant Carrefour ties up with apple farmers in HP
2. Bharti Retail enters Jaipur, lines up $2 bn for expansion of retail in India

Office products retailer Staples Inc gave a weaker-than-expected forecast for 2010, as it invests to expand its store base and technology business, sending its shares down more than 7 percent. Staples, which also missed profit expectations in the holiday quarter, said it was not planning for a big economic recovery this year. It forecast earnings of $1.23 to $1.33 a share before items, while analysts were expecting $1.40 per share, according to Thomson Reuters.

“This guidance assumes a modest economic recovery throughout 2010 and increased investment in our growth ideas,” Staples said on a conference call, citing areas where it has low market share, such as business technology and copy and print. Staples shares fell 7.6 percent to $23.89 in morning trading on Nasdaq. Shares of smaller rivals Office Depot and OfficeMax fell roughly 2 percent after the tepid forecast from the industry leader raised concerns about a recovery in business spending.

Investors often look at this sector for a pulse of the economy as demand for office supplies is closely tied with white-collar employment rates. Staples said it plans to open about 40 stores in North America in 2010, slightly more than the 36 net new stores it opened in 2009.

Credit Suisse analyst Gary Balter said Wall Street may also have been “overly bullish” when estimating cost savings from Staples’ acquisition of Dutch rival Corporate Express. Following the July 2008 acquisition, many analysts expected Staples to benefit more than rivals from an improvement in spending at small businesses and other corporate clients.

Still, Oppenheimer analyst Brian Nagel said he viewed Staples as one of the best-positioned names for 2010. Nagel said expectations had climbed lately due to strengthening sales trends at rival chains and on prospects for better employment in the United States.

Office-supply retailers, which saw corporate clients and other shoppers turn frugal in the recession, are finally seeing customers return as the economy improves.

Staples said quarterly sales rose 4 percent to $6.41 billion, beating analysts’ average estimate of $6.30 billion. Total operating costs rose about 7 percent in the period. Fourth-quarter net earnings fell to $238.8 million, or 32 cents a share, from $289.1 million, or 40 cents a share, a year earlier.

Excluding one-time items, it earned 38 cents a share, a penny short of analysts’ average forecast, according to Thomson Reuters. Staples expects sales to rise at a mid-single-digit percentage rate in the current quarter, and forecast quarterly earnings of 25 cents to 27 cents a share before one-time items. Analysts expected 27 cents a share.

Last month, both Office Depot and OfficeMax posted better-than-expected quarterly results and said sales trends were perking up. Sales at Staples’ North American stores open at least a year, or same-store sales, were up 3 percent on demand for computers, ink and toner. However, sales of big-ticket items like business computers and furniture continued to be tepid.

UBS analyst William Truelove said same-store sales fell short of his expectations for a 5 percent increase, but the North American delivery segment – which includes corporate and contract customers – performed much better than he expected.

Related Posts

No related posts were found, so here's a consolation prize: What Retail Fashion Head Offices Are Based In The Midlands?.

Marks & Spencer chairman Sir Stuart Rose may be forced to take a pay cut after angry shareholders demand a reduction in his £1.13m basic salary. The retailer’s remuneration committee could reduce Rose’s salary within two months following consultations with shareholders. But retail analysts suggest Rose could leave M&S earlier than his stated departure deadline of July 2011 if the row escalates.

Some shareholders at blue-chip institutions believe that after the recent, expensive recruitment of Marc Bolland as the high street giant’s new chief executive on a £15m package, Rose’s remuneration should now fall substantially. He will hand day-to-day control to Bolland in May. The shareholder revolt over Rose’s pay threatens to overshadow the arrival at M&S in May of Bolland, a respected retail executive who has joined the company from the supermarket firm WM Morrison.

Relations between shareholders and M&S have deteriorated markedly in recent years. M&S is thought to be frustrated at its shareholders’ decision to go public on the pay issue. The remuneration committee is understood to have already begun a consultation with shareholders on Rose’s pay. However, the company is being criticised for not acting sooner to neutralise the issue. Two members of the five-strong committee – Sir David Michels and Martha Lane Fox – have historically enjoyed close relations with Rose.

“We have paid for a very expensive chief executive. It would therefore seem appropriate for an executive chairman taking a back seat to be paid less,” one institutional shareholder said this evening.

Rose himself has not had good relations with shareholders since his decision to assume the roles of chairman and chief executive in 2008. Combining the two most powerful positions in a company contravenes corporate governance guidelines. Rose took on both jobs in order to conduct a better search for an internal replacement to him as chief executive. However, no suitable candidate emerged, and the former chairman, Lord Burns, received a controversial pay-off.

“Given Rose has only a year to go, and the chairman of a FTSE 100 company is always going to be paid a lot of money, and that this will cause damage, it could be a pyrrhic victory,” said a leading retail analyst. “But he made a mistake taking on the dual roles. It would not be a shock if he departed early.”

Meanwhile, M&S is attempting to improve its ethical and environmental credentials with a welter of new commitments under its Plan A programme. M&S says it is increasing its fair trade product lines, improving sustainable sourcing of palm oil and other key commodities, and taking steps to ensure garment workers in Bangladesh, India and Sri Lanka receive a “living wage”.

The move has won support from Jonathon Porritt, founder director of the sustainable development charity Forum for the Future, who said: “Three years on, Plan A has become an undisputed ‘market leader’ in terms of corporate sustainability initiatives. Through it, M&S is addressing the right things, in the right way, to secure critically important outcomes.”

Related Posts

No related posts were found, so here's a consolation prize: Why We Buy: The Science of Shopping–Updated and Revised for the Internet, the Global Consumer, and Beyond.