Tag: Stores

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Retail Stores Redefined

Today a retailer in India aims at attracting more people to his store and move up on the store conversion ratio. Retail design is what attracts a customer to a store. This year, retailers will look at bringing something new with respect to design to their stores. Here is what we feel will be the trendsetters.

De clutter: Today the customer looks at shopping as de-stress activity and cluttered and overstuffed retail stores do not appeal to them anymore. Open places allow them to swiftly move around the store and enjoy the shopping experience.

Pinch of art: Art has adds the premium quotient to a retail store. Brands with long known legacy will take to utilizing this tool a lot this year. Levi’s took to this trend in 2007 by creating a 34 feet long heritage wall at their flagship store in Bangalore which spoke of the brand’s heritage and world history. Numero Uno worked around their poster by creating a wall behind their POS counter.

Get green: Gong green is the buzz work and retail design will also take to this trend. Retail stores will boast of green design applications. Use of energy efficient lighting or usages of recycled materials for making fixtures are small initiatives in the field. Besides these, more and more initiatives will be taken in this sphere and will become the in thing which every retailer will look at incorporating in their stores. Tata, a leading retailer in India, undertook the initiative of going green for its stores with great effect. E retailers are also taking to the trend. Fashion and you in a progressive ‘go green’ initiative has introduced durable and eco-friendly packaging for its products. The packaging utilizes recycled original craft paper which is highly exclusive, thick and comes with a better finish.

Scents personified: Currently a majority of Indian stores lack this trend which is one of the most sought after trend in the west. A refreshing fragrance adds to a shopping experience leaving a customer vitalized and fresh. Studies show that fragrances can have twice as much higher brand recall as compared to visual branding. Creating signature fragrances will be an added feather to the trend.

Brighter lighting effect: Gone are the days when stores preferred low lighting to add to the look of a store. Vibrant and well lit retail spaces are what customers look for today. It adds to the buying experience by adding a sense of life to the store.

Technology aid: Last but not the lease, the use of technology in retail design is inevitable. Technology is what drives design in most of its forms. Be it LED lighting, store lighting or signage’s or interactive mediums in a store, technology is omnipresent. But this year it will move beyond its traditional use. Intel has launched an interactive digital signage will be a new for the stores and definitely a hit amongst customers.

So the next time you enter a store, make sure you take notice of these trends and analyze their effect on you as a customer.

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Transforming Indian Retail Stores

Retail in India is unorganized in terms of industry as well as in terms of the selling points. As Indian consumers we have grown seeing Indian retail stores also known as kirana stores. These stores either large or small have always been cluttered, barring the entry of customer and also not well designed to suit the need of the retailer in India.

But now this scenario is changing as retailers in India look forward to better customer satisfaction, sales and footfalls.

Indian consumers have transformed the way they shop. They love to touch and feel the products, have become brand loyal and also look for value for money. A change for better in retail stores in important.

Changes incorporated: The Indian retailers have now understood the need of not just selling products but experience. Indian consumer is now of age when they want to move into a shop try out the products in terms of the packaging, variety and pricing. Moreover, with modern retail coming in, people also look for discounts and deals.

Looking at the consumers need, the neighborhood kirana stores are also now transforming themselves. To keep the customer intact they are bringing in larger variety of products, more brands, proper stacking of products, inventories, space for customer to move across store and choose the product and better deals and discounts. What also gives the neighborhood stores an upper hand is the facility of home delivery, which they offer either at a very minimal cost or at times no cost.

Offering such services only help stores to keep their customers coming back and also enhances the loyalty towards the store.

Consumer’s takeaway: Consumers now like the way retailers in India are transforming their stores. The changes incorporated by these retailers have made people come back to the neighborhood kirana store to shop for their basic needs. Moreover, the consumers have a better prospect to smile upon as they now can choose between going to a modern retail store or the neighborhood kirana store according to their need.

Way forward: Such changes across the retail sector has enhanced the way a consumer shops, making his life easier and convenient. Also, the consumers love it as they can now enjoy value for their hard earned money.

Moreover, looking forward at the Indian retailer stores scenario, with consumers growing knowledge and reach , more and more people will only move towards more organised retail stores in order to serve their customers well. Way forward we will see that modern retail and neighborhood stores will have their own way of surviving in this ecosystem without harming each other’s existence.

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A Makeover for Retail Stores

The Indian retail market is the only industry that keeps the consumer sentiment up even when the economy sees a downturn. The retailer in India never faces a drought in terms of buying. The only thing that stops the growth is rising realty cost and shrinking spaces which curbs the retailers to open larger and more retail stores at a fast pace. The brands are feeling the pinch but a strategized movement in various markets will help them grow better.

The problem area: Growing number of brands, coming up of malls, realty laws becoming stringent and space becoming costly, all these contribute into calling for a problem for retailers in India. The retailers, who looking at the growing spending power and aspirations among Indian consumers, want to grow their presence in the Indian market rapidly, but with rising realty costs they are unable to reach their target consumers. The store sizes have shrunk. Recently we saw all the big names in the retail sector who run large size stores have sought to shrink the size of the stores due to high operational costs and rentals.
The brands who want to penetrate further in markets have now curbed their plans and are planning to grow in a slower manner, which also puts down their target sales and further growth.

What needs to be done: The retailers in India will now have to work towards creating stores which offer value for space. Incorporating more workable equipments which also help in creating a clutter free store, will help them get more value from each square feet they rent, buy or lease. The visual merchandising will play a critical role along with limited inventories so that there are no stock ups at the store. Also a better understanding of markets the retailers want to move into will help them design the stores accordingly.

E-retail: a better prospect: What can also be the next big thing is the growth of e-retail. With space becoming constraint and the operational costs becoming high in terms of maintaining retail stores, e-retail has come across as a better alternative which not only eases the shopping experience for consumers but also lets retailers to sell better with lower operational costs. Today almost all big retailers in the country have their e-retail segment as well. This helps them reach consumers which they still have not touched upon. The internet penetration in India is growing and for people who have less access to brands through physical stores, e-retail proves to be a boon for them.