Cautious branding for Wal-Mart cash & carry

More than two years after India’s Bharti Enterprises announced a joint venture with US-based Wal-Mart for wholesale cash and carry operations, the name of the stores has been announced. Interestingly, the name neither has Wal-Mart nor Bharti in it. The 50-50 JV partners have decided to call it ‘BestPrice Modern Wholesale’.

The ‘cautious’ branding of the stores is perhaps due to continued resistance to foreign investment in retail ventures from political quarters, NGOs as well as businesses, experts pointed out. The government had also ordered a study to assess the impact of big stores on the smaller mom-n-pop ones, in the face of such opposition.

But, Wal-Mart representatives argued that there’s nothing surprising about the name, “which has been finalised after a lot of research”.

 They said that across the world the chain has several stores, which do not have Wal-Mart’ in the name.

“Wal-Mart operates under at least 50 different names around the world.” Among others, Wal-Mart operates in Mexico as Walmex, in the UK as ASDA, and in Japan as Seiyu.

Wal-Mart’s business model is based on selling a wide variety of general merchandise at “Always low prices”.

Raj Jain, MD and CEO of Bharti Wal-Mart Pvt Ltd, said on Monday, “BestPrice Modern Wholesale store name reflects what business owners can expect at our self-service stores — best, fixed and fair prices for a wide assortment and variety of high quality merchandise that will help them better serve their customers so that they can save money and live better.”

Madhukar Sabnavis, country head — discovery and planning, O&M says, “The word ‘wholesale’ in the name brings a lot of positives with it, since communities are used to buying in bulk from wholesalers. Traditionally, consumers have been used to short names, but this one’s an interesting move. The length of the title doesn’t matter. If the store becomes popular, consumers will develop their own short forms.”

Bharti calls its front-end retail stores ‘EasyDay’, again not naming Bharti or Wal-Mart to avoid controversy.

In November 2006, Wal-Mart announced a joint venture with Bharti Enterprises to open retail stores in India. It was decided that Wal-Mart along with Bharti would handle the wholesale side of the business, while Bharti would manage the front end retail outlets. Under the current rules, foreign direct investment is not allowed in the front-end retail sector in India, but there’s no restriction for the wholesale business.

“Offering the advantage of best fixed and fair prices”, the stores will be open exclusively to business owners, not end-consumers, Bharti Wal-Mart has clarified. The stores would cater to traders, restaurant owners, hoteliers, caterers, fruit and vegetable resellers, kiranas, other retail store owners, offices and institutions.

Jain said in Monday’s statement: “We gave ourselves a window of 18-24 months to launch our first wholesale cash-and-carry store. We are firmly on track and we have begun registration of membership in Punjab in advance of the store opening to enable us to better forecast and serve the needs our commercial customers.”

The JV has already opened a distribution centre near Chandigarh and more outlets are expected shortly. These distribution centres would service both the cash-and-carry stores as well as large retailers like Bharti Retail. The JV is expected to open 10 to 15 wholesale cash-and-carry facilities and employ approximately 5,000 people over the next seven years.