Footfalls in Mumbai malls up by 20%

Sudhir Sharma and his fiancée would have shopped for their marriage anyway. But the New Year has made them a little more carefree in their spending. Sharma, from Byculla, said due to the year-end discount sales offered across malls and shops, he has overspent.
Colaba resident Lisa Rebello, who made purchases of over Rs20,000 was surprised that she got a Rs500 discount on the already discounted men’s apparel at a multi-brand store. “We thought it to be nice to buy it at once. Unfortunately they do not have offers for women,” Robello said. However, that wasn’t all, the freebies at the store included a trip to Europe, a diamond pendant or weekend getaways.

With offers galore at the city’s malls, many like them are turning to shop. Malls like Westside, Phoenix Mills, Shoppers Stop, Globus and Inorbit, are all providing discounts on apparel, electronic goods, home decor, watches, kitchenware, dining items and even coffee. And not surprisingly, the retail outlest have seen an increase in footfalls.

Phoneix Mills with 18 different kind of offers across brands, for instance, has seen a 20 per cent increase in footfalls this month. The offers include cash discounts on purchase, buy one get one free, and discounts of up to 50 per cent. “As per our records, the footfall this year is 12 per cent higher than what it was last year,” said Alex Coutinho, marketing head, High Street Phoenix.

Talking about a mall’s buy two get one free, offer this year, Rajiv Rana, assistant manager, Globus, said that this was the first time they had started such an offer and this offer, which is only for Christmas and New Year will close on January 3. “The footfall has gone up,” he said. 

Stores like Shoppers Stop and malls like Inorbit, have offers on almost everything from apparel to jewellry to cosmetics to watches. Apart from the offers by different brands at Shoppers Stop, the store itself had an unique offer for its First Citizen members — shop worth Rs30,000 and get a diamond set from Gili and if you shop worth Rs1 lakh you get two designer watches free.

The InOrbit mall took it to another level and arranged for different activities such as storytelling, dancing etc. According to the operations manager Ashish Chaudhari, Inorbit mall, “On a purchase of Disney goods worth Rs2,500, customers can get a chance to win a trip to Hong Kong Disneyland.”

While discounts had a variety, for some shoppers the variety of the goods was a bit of a dampener. “We bought some clothes but we still hope if they would have had some more varieties. We normally shop here so there wasn’t much variety. There was only quantity,” said Nevile Barsiwala, resident of Dadar.

With respect to electronic appliances, too, shoppers thought they had a good deal. “For some mobiles their discounts are good. The piece I bought had MRP of Rs6,000 but I got it at Rs4,000,” said Nidhi Sarkar. People like Ajay Khaire, who came to shop were more interested in the interest-free EMI scheme. “My family is looking for LCD and TV, the interest free scheme is interesting for us.”