Theory of Retail Incubation & Propagation

Department stores in India played host to the incubation of many brands in the early and mid nineties. Debuting brands like Colourplus and new entrants like UCB and Pepe were launched in a shop-in-shop format within modern retailer stores like Shoppers Stop and Lifestyle almost twenty years ago. Such brands got to grow fast as the department stores were proliferating across the country and the brand's expansion was facilitated by dint of the sheer multiplier effect. Research in organized retail evolution shows the emergence of shop-in-shops and private labels as independent brands when they are incubated in  retail stores. St. Michael of Marks and Spencer was franchised a free-standing independent store brand (until it was withdrawn in 2000), after having it as a private label within the store for a number of years. Future Group’s John Miller was a private label within the Pantaloon and Big Bazaar stores for long until recently the brand has been expanded to have its own independent retail stores. Lifestyle’s private label Melange is being spun off as independent exclusive brand stores. Provogue (fashion apparel brand), Gini & Jony (kid’s apparel brand), Biba (women’s apparel brand) and Gili (fashion jewellery brand) in India were launched as shop-in-shops within department stores like Shoppers’ Stop and Lifestyle in the nineties and they were incubated within the stores until they became strong enough to be rolled out in free-standing retail formats. Park Avenue was incubated as a private label within the Raymond shop before it became an independent retail brand. Similarly in the footwear category, Hush Puppies in India was incubated within the flagship stores of Bata for long until the retail organization propagated its brand stores in a free-standing format in malls. Risk of failure was eliminated by taking advantage of the large footfalls of target customers the incubating stores had readily. Further, the cost of promotion and advertising also was kept low in the shop-in-shop incubation stage as the brands were riding piggy back on the store promotions and communication. These new brands also enjoyed the patronage of the loyal customers of the store that incubated them and this contributed to their successful propagation as independent exclusive brand stores. So, careful and sustained incubation of private labels gives rise to their propagation as free-standing brand stores. A retailer should not fail to incubate with care private labels and nurture them, for these can emerge as free-standing retail brands.

Every label incubated and nurtured by the retailer, nestles strong enough in the minds of its customers to become a Brand worthy of propagation as a free-standing retail business proposition and that's what I call 'the theory of retail incubation and propagation."

- Dr. Gibson G. Vedamani

Not just a ‘One Hit Wonder’!

Back in 1957, James Gaylord Muir, the Sales Manager of Wolverine, USA had not chosen a name for the shoe-line he had developed, for until the eve of his presentation on the new footwear range, he had everything in order but a name to christen the range with. Struck by the paucity of innovation in the thought process to justify the comfort of a range of footwear, he was yet groping in the dark frantically looking for the right name that could suit the collection. He was about to settle for the name ‘Lasers’, that his company’s advertising agency had suggested. As Muir dined with one of his regional salesmen that evening, a dish, which formed part of his meal, amazed him and he was told that it was traditionally fired southern cornballs known as ‘hush puppies’. The host also elaborated to him on how the cornball dish got its name. – that farmers used to throw these cornballs to quiet their barking dogs. It hushed puppies as they chewed on the cornballs and hence they were known as ‘hush puppies’. That explained it all as Muir immediately made a connect to the age-old reference to tired feet and the pain of wearing uncomfortable shoes as barking dogs! Hush Puppies could not mean anything more than being so comfortable when worn. Muir conceptualized the basset hound as the brand’s mascot that has since become synonymous with the brand. As I think about the brand Hush Puppies, I associate it instantaneously with the mascot hound. Hush Puppies became famous as a casual brand of footwear and its claim to fame in the early 60’s came when the rubber soles of the shoes he was wearing are said to have reportedly saved the then famous Rolling Stones guitarist Keith Richard who was almost electrocuted on stage in an accident in California. The success of the brand was significant to the extent of almost one in every ten Americans was wearing Hush Puppies.

The brand was in trouble in the mid nineties and as the organization was reportedly considering dropping the brand in 1994 as sales allegedly plummeted to just 30,000 pairs. A newly hired designer Maggie Mercado hit upon the idea of reviving the retro styles of the 50’s such as Wayne (née Duke) oxford and Earl slip-on casuals in different and interesting hues of waterproof suede. Famous designers like Anna Sui and john Bartlett are said to have featured Hush Puppies shoes in their new collections in 1995. Many iconic film stars such as Sylvester Stallone, Tom Hanks, Sharon Stone and Jim Carrey were seen sporting the brand showing the brand’s real casual attitude. Undertaking the re-strategizing exercise Geoffrey Bloom, President of Hush Puppies focused on riding the American trend towards dressing-down at work and created his collections to drive the trend. The brand filled the huge gap that existed between plain canvas shoes and dress shoes. The company sent out video clips on casual footwear fashion to over 200 corporates in the USA to introduce casual wear at work. When IBM and Ford announced casual days at work, Hush Puppies ran congratulatory messages. Soon the brand found itself selling well not only in stores like Barneys and Pleasure Swell in 1995, but it recorded amazing sales in J.C. Penney, Saks, Bloomingdales, Nordstrom and the like. In 1996 Bloom who was responsible for the resurgence of the brand was rewarded for his remarkable turnaround achievement by being appointed Chairman of the company.

Now we have Hush Puppies stores in India brought to us by Bata as shop-in-shops in their large formats and as free-standing brand stores in malls and high street locations. The brand offers a mixed bag of collections to Indian consumers!

Some retailers in India may have a few lessons to learn from the resurgence of Hush Puppies in the USA. The brand went the retro way to catch up with emerging customers! The company traced its own past successful paths and retreaded them. It surely did not pass off just as ‘a one hit wonder”!

- Dr. Gibson G. Vedamani

Game Changers

Modern retailing is changing household purchasing patterns and I came to know that firsthand only when I observed the women in my life pushing their shopping carts through the aisles of supermarkets. The basket of purchase has become more and heavier by the day. Stocks on shelves beckon them as they are reminded even of the five flavours of essences they feel necessary to buy for the one cake they sometimes decide to bake! As products are kept in a neat array and in easy access, they are picked up. I remember the days when my mom used to prepare a list of things to buy for the household every month to stock-up and leave it with the grocer to keep ready for my dad to pick it up on his way back from work. While reconciling the bill with the stocks, I recollect (two score years ago!), once dad found an unbilled pack of dates in the grocery and he quickly went back to return it and the grocer said that it was a freebie for buying for more than fifty rupees in the store! There was not even one item allowed to be purchased more than the planned ones figuring in the list religiously prepared by mom. Here we go, with our modern women who enjoy going on a buying spree every month, often relieving our supermarketers of their 'dump' responsibility! The consumption patterns are fast changing with the way retailers evolve their strategies and tactics. They have been changing fast with the way 'urban consumables' are sampled for consumption in smaller versions (but not stripped versions, mind you) with our rural brethren! The inauspicious retailing season of the "Aadi", "Ashada"or "Shravan" month falling between July-August in South India, when customer off-takes are at the lowest, has been transformed into a successful selling period, hitting upon the strategy of clearance sales! Now we have the national festival holidays - Independence day and Republic Day as BIG sales days!  Result oriented activations - true game changers.

The entry of Pantaloon Retail (now Future Group) into value retailing in September 2001 opening four stores within a record twenty two days to launch the format in India changed the modern retailing landscape of the country completely. It surely changed the business for the group since then. Until then Pantaloons was drawing battle lines with others competing only in the large format department store space. The new format now has over 150 stores spread in almost a centum locations, if I am not wrong!   Big Bazaar offers the pleasure of discovering great bargains in all its stores. Not only that, there is fashion too at Big Bazaar! A true game changer.

Steve Jobs opened the first Apple store in the year 2001. Since then Apple stores have changed the game. In my friend Surender Gnanaloivu's words, "Apple stores are a rage...but they, unlike his (Steve Job's) products, are fundamentally based on customer needs- geek squad, 100% live products from which one can call for staff assistance, continuous 'instore seminars' on how to maximize the use of their products etc.. Their store design in NY glass cube and Shangai glass cylinder are the world's most photographed stores in which the materials used are inspired by their products design philosophy- never done before! Dared to break the rules and differentiated." I visited the NY Apple cube on the walkway in 2007 with the Doyen of India's Modern Retailing, Kishoreji when he received his International Retailer of the Year Award from the National Retail Federation, USA. Apple stores rock with their amazing Apple Bar geeks who make even confusing applications easy for customers to use. Very interactive as they are,  Job's innovations have become extremely customer friendly and above all they have become 'addictive' and not just a 'rage'.  We all know the fact: once an Apple user, always remains an Apple user. A true game changer.

Operating in strikingly similar domains with their retail brand architecture singularly comprising a mix of department stores, home stores, hypermarkets or supermarkets, franchised brands, etc., many retailing organizations in India struggle hard to differentiate strategically or distinguish by innovative activations to win customers. All that they need now are true game changers!

- Dr. Gibson G. Vedamani

Consumer Connect: After all, what's in a name?

As a friend and I were driving in the city of Pune after a morning meeting last Saturday, we were wondering if we could have our lunch at The Great Punjab or at Darios. Being not in a mood to sit and dine in a fine dining restaurant, we thought we could grab some fast food on the go. My friend instantaneously became nostalgic as we were rummaging through more options and he suggested that we go to Pune's Burger King. He seems to have enjoyed the various kinds of burgers served at the Burger King in Koregaon Park in Pune. We parked our car and I walked in disbelief wondering where in Pune does one have the Burger King! It was a shack that housed the Burger King and it very much resembled the  'paratha' shops that adorn the roadsides of Tamil Nadu and Kerala! The outside space around the restaurant was full of parked motorcycles and cars. The entire place was filled with a crowd of very young people. Famished as both of us were I thought we may just go straight to order for the burgers, sit at a table and start eating. But when we entered the shack, I could see a serpentine queue of youngsters waiting patiently to register their orders at the solitary cash till. We stood in the queue and placed our orders, all of which - burgers, soft drinks and fries including, totalled to a value of Indian Rupees two hundred and eighty only. Though the cashier printed a bill, he wrote my friend's name on it and retained it.

Our orders were not delivered for a good half an hour (I am not exaggerating, honestly!). At a certain point in time while waiting for the burgers to arrive, I thought that our orders were perhaps forgotten and they were serving those that came after us. It was not so. We were waiting for the delivery of our burgers and I could see just suppliers going around with plates of burgers and fries calling out names of customers seeking their acknowledgement shown by the raising of their hands, to find out where they were sitting so that the burgers could be served. As time was passing by fast, all the names called out by the suppliers sounded to me very much like my friend's name only. Finally our burgers arrived. I was just taken aback to see the sheer large size of the burgers served that were almost twice the size of McDonald's burgers, if not larger! All these king sized burgers were only for unit prices of Rs 70, Rs 50 and thereabouts! The painted price-list hung up near the store signage was a few years old and there were only additions of items to it but there were no changes in prices made at all. That means the prices have remained without an increase for a few years now! The very thought of such constant steadily behaving prices was incredible though, I could understand the true service motive behind running the restaurant and one could easily understand every reason of its success among the youth! Sinking my teeth into the burger I was enjoying every bit of it simultaneously listening to my friend's account of his glorious student days in Pune and his visits to the Burger King.

I knew that it was a truly youthful, spirited Pune based outlet. As I looked up I saw the signboard and the 'King' after the 'Burger' was covered and in some more places erased, leaving it just as as "Burger .....", without the King. I remembered instantly the long drawn recent fight between the international Burger King and the Pune Burger King over the usage of the Trade Mark. Though the court ruled that it was infringement and passing off of trade mark, the owners contended that they started the fastfood outlet twenty years ago much before Burger King was registered in India! They complied with the verdict and masked the 'King'.

Business goes on as usual in the outlet perhaps more briskly than even before with the signage "Burger ....." everywhere in the premises! It's only good quality and quantity that matter to today's customers who know how to smartly hang around. The consumer connect is only with the product experienced in the emotionally enveloping conversations punctuated with oft erupting laughters in happiness among themselves and not clearly with the brand "Burger King". Pune's Burger ....." is all about the young consumers' emotional connect to the place. They seem to ask, "After all what's in a name?"!

- Dr. Gibson G. Vedamani

The Eyecatcher

Retailing is the only business whose success is dependent upon customer walk-ins: a business that practically does not go to customers but waits for them to come to its premises. Even in modern e-tailing, there are triggers sent by emails or links uploaded in social websites to instantaneously lead one into browsing for buying.  It has been a hard task for many brick-and-mortar retailers and malls to attract footfalls. Malls depend largely upon their anchors to bring in the right footfalls into the premises. High streets are busy with huge passersby and stores situated there only have to attract those passing by to set their feet into the store.

In the olden days, there were no malls in India, nor were there any large modern stores as we find nowadays. It was only in the high streets of cities and towns that retail stores could be found. To attract footfalls into the premises, retail stores used to sport very attractive show windows where product displays were made prominent. A little more than a score years ago bystanders could be thrilled to see the new lady mannequin in a local apparel store moving its hands constantly to welcome customers with a namaskar! A male mannequin that kept sipping a glass of cola also used to accompany it. Once when we were out on a family trip shopping in the busy J.N. Street in Pondicherry, the male mannequin drinking cola attracted the attention of my then four year old daughter who quipped to her grandfather, “Hi grandpa, see this doll, it drinks exactly like how dad drinks beer!” One can imagine what kind of looks I would have got from my dad! (It was taboo to drink any alcohol in India those days!)  Joke apart, these mannequins were placed right at the entrance in retail stores in high streets and they attracted everyone’s attention and consequently footfalls, too. Innovatively retailers brought those ‘deadly’ mannequins live with motorized movements to attract customer attention!

Some stores had their show windows dressed thematically, updating them with messages that could have their currency significance, much like the Amul hoardings that everyone wanted to wait and watch. The Bata stores organized signature displays of footwear in floral forms that became the standard across all stores. The displays not only had such signature forms but motifs and props, which befitted the season celebrated, accompanied them. Professional window dressers were given guidelines on visual merchandising along with a supply of the required materials and props so that no finer element of the displays across the stores was missed at any cost. The display windows were punctuated with a huge thematic picture, called ‘eyecatcher’ which compelled every passerby to look into the store and reminded customers to enter. The eyecatcher changed with the change of theme every time and it was the cynosure of all eyes. The theme ran around the store in festoons and bunting as well, in a very aesthetic manner.

Modern retailing in India has been missing these age-old tools to pull in footfalls. A few of the new age concessionaires in airports in order to attract the busy passersby, have digital display screens projected; others in high streets have open, see-through windows and yet a few more have open entrances with just piles of table and nested table displays! After a long time I got to see a beautifully done show window in a luxury mall recently – yes, I was truly amazed to see the grandly done windows of the Louis Vuitton store in U B City mall in Bangalore accompanied by the white thematic cut-outs of garments beautifully arrayed to attract every customer passing by! Among the many innovative techniques of inviting customers ‘loudly’ into the retail store, displays and show windows play a permanent and timeless role. The right visual presentation in retail may not only attract the customers but also make them associate themselves with the store striking their instantaneous belongingness!

Innovation in visually appealing to customers to bring them into the store will continue through the ages, but with modern ‘eyecatchers’ though!

- Dr. Gibson G. Vedamani