Bets are rising on the other

MUMBAI: Renu Malhotra, a mother of two and a marketing professional, has found a new way to shop.

Rather than fighting the Mumbai traffic for an hour, then hunting for a parking place for the next 15 minutes, shoving and manoeuvring her way through the crowd at the mall to buy some air-bags, she decided to stay back at home after work and simply order for it over the phone.

“With work and home to be managed, it is really not easy to find the energy to go shopping. So I got this catalogue from one of the nearby retailers and now I just give a call and order, whenever and whatever I need,” said Malhotra.

Malhotra is one of new-gen shoppers for whom shopping experience does not count as much as time and convenience.

In a bid to reach out to such consumers, retailers have begun experimenting, and have even tasted success to an extent, with newer ways of selling their products to them.

Catalogue retailing, online shopping and dedicated television channels, alternative retail channels are rooting well.

The biggest chunk of business still comes from online shopping, which started soon after Internet arrived  in India.

But it is only now that things are getting big with retailers getting on to the online platform. As the credit-card base widens and cash on delivery becomes popular, business here picking up.

Industry players estimate that e-commerce (minus the travel segment) should touch Rs 1,000 crore within a year.

Saujanya Srivastava, vice president, marketing, Future Bazaar, said, “Trust in terms of online transactions and use of credit card was an issue earlier, but slowly, people are opening up to the idea of online shopping. Attractive deals and a huge variety are the triggers for boom in online shopping.”

With no rental and maintenance costs, retailers find it viable to offer discounts online without shrinking margins.

Giving competition to Rediff and e-bay are pioneer retailers such as Pantaloon and Shoppers Stop, with the latter planning to go online in a few months.

Future Bazaar, Pantaloon Retail’s virtual retailing unit which started last June, is doubling its sales month-on-month now and sales are expected to touch $20 million by the time it completes one year of business.

Another retail chain, HyperCity, started catalogue retailing under the brand name Argos last year.

Catalogue retailing is when the customer shops by telephone from the comfort of his home by selecting from a catalogue featuring the products.

Argos currently offers services in Mumbai and is slowly expanding. Andrew Levermore, chief executive officer, HyperCity says the Indian consumer has been shopping from home via a telephone call to their kirana shop for decades.

“So the concept itself is nothing new. What we are doing is putting a catalogue of 5,000 products in front of them to give them maximum choice.”

Evolution is continuous. Today someone from Khamgaon in Maharashtra can get a new phone as soon as his counterpart in Mumbai.

“Since alternative channels take all products everywhere, traders have started ordering merchandise online. This way they get the products a week or ten days earlier than they would have through the conventional distribution channel” said Neeraj Sanan, head, marketing, Web18, a unit of Television 18 that is the media major’s portals’ mothership.
In fact, from just online, now sellers are looking to target the consumer with a 360 degree approach.

Hypercity has online, catalogue and physical retail outlets. Future Bazaar is now opening smaller format retail centres called Big Bazaar Unlimited, where people could go through catalogues and use kiosks to order.

HomeShop 18, another TV18 venture, is present online as well as with catalogues and now has gone a step further. It has started a 24*7 television channel just for shopping.
Raman Gulati, VP, finance and operations, HomeShop 18, says his venture will change the way people shop in India.

“Convenience is just a call away. Imagine sitting in an air-conditioned room and shopping, while watching television,” Gulati said.

The revenues from a channel are expected to be five times that of a online portal. Considering the penetration of television, once the distribution is set up, the retailer can go all out to target their consumers sitting at home.

They can offload old inventory, advertise about new products, take showcasing and demonstrating to a new level.

However, alternative channels may not be able to provide the sort of experience that malls can.

For, everyone knows what ‘shopping’ means to Indians —a stress buster, a family outing, friends hanging out together or a  weekend source of entertainment.
But then, in terms of tempting deals, discounts, range of products offered, physical outlets lag.

Future Bazaar would have all that Big Bazaar could offer and even more —- in terms of platforms where the ‘out of stock’ concept is absent.

Shop for movie tickets online and get them delivered to your parents in another city as a present.

Be it the latest phone or MP3 player, designer jewellery, couch for living room, T-shirt, books or CDs —- retailers are delivering it all at your doorstep.

Cosmetics for mom, LCD television for dad, Twenty20 tickets for the son and fashion accessories for daughter.

For Indian families, malls, slowly, are no more the only place to shop.

s_tanvi@dnaindia.net