Description
Today, it has become increasingly critical for retailers to ensure an equally strong presence across all customer touchpoints, whether it’s through touchscreen, voice assistant, live streaming, and more. Only then can a retailer hope to make his store relevant to consumers, who are increasingly becoming nomads in their choice of shopping interface and the way they interact with brick-and-mortar stores.
Our story “Maximizing store value through end to-end retail management” (pages 26-27) dwells on why retailers need to redesign their stores in sync with the emerging consumer demands. Stores need to have a footprint across all consumer touchpoints to be in step with the changing consumer habits and to maximize traffic and footfall. The story calls on retailers to dial up their retail management practices in order to make faster decisions on how to reengineer their store operations and amplify footfall quantum in the future.
Our cover story in this issue on Odisha-based Metto Supermarket (pages 18-25) offers a fascinating read on how even trained retailers, in their zeal to move the flywheel too fast, can come a cropper. It’s the story of a retailer who had all the right creds by way of educational background (MBA), business lineage (family members in business) and one who went all the way to gather extra business moss by working with top retailers. And yet, he went grievously wrong with his second store which had to shut within the first year of operations. The setback pushed the retailer back professionally by three years during which he went back to the drawing board, relearned the lessons of retail science and has since been operating his five stores successfully, with plans to cross Rs. 50-60 crore in revenue by 2024.
