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Retail Business Environment

Notes buying furniture. Therefore, the retailer needs to expand his outlet in order to provide variety.
With the increase in variety it would be possible to also open niche furniture shops concentrating
on one type of material, like say for example only cane furniture. Tax laws as well as problems
of regional competition hamper branding, consolidation and establishment of a large retail
network. In addition, the imported furniture effect also takes a toll on even the traditional
furniture outlets. Better customisation than the conservative carpenter-constrained-customisation,
and using technology at both the manufacturing and retailing end, would see the beginning of
a new era of furniture retailing in India.

Home Furnishing Retailing

The unorganised sector dominates the Indian market in the home décor segment. The focus for
the organised sector needs to incorporate the latest fashion trends and contemporary styles in
our products so that their customers can never run out of choice. An in-house design studio
consisting of a team of highly qualified and experienced designers and professionals will ensure
that they offer the best to their customers. The advantage of being an export house will help
companies like Welspun, as they are constantly catering to the demands of the international
market — in terms of trends and designs — and can thus use the expertise for Indian market.
Home furnishing is emerging as the next hot destination for textile players. Exports of home
textiles – bed, bath and kitchen linen – have zoomed over the past six months, after the dismantling
of quotas, sparking off a fresh wave of investment in the segment.
Larger players, such as Welspun India and Abhishek Industries, are sinking big money into
expanding capacities. Smaller companies, some of whom are in unrelated businesses, are also
foraying into home textiles - Gangotri Textiles, KG Denim, S. Kumars Nationwide, Bannari
Amman Spinning, to name a few. GHCL (Gujarat Heavy Chemicals), which has a spinning
division, plans to get ahead in the race by acquiring companies in the U.S. and Europe. With
manufacturing facilities closing down in the west, international retailers are stepping up their
sourcing of home textiles from countries such as China, India and Pakistan. Besides, home
textiles appear to be a good way to scale up the value chain or diversify as is the case with
companies such as KG Denim and Aarvee Denim. For fabric players, home textiles might prove
to be a logical extension to their existing business.

Consumer Electronics Retailing

Several empirical studies have shown that the superstore method of product display works best
in consumer electronics stores, although it is far from new. Originally, it was known as “price
point merchandising,” or PPM. This starts with a minimum of three different models for
practically every SKU in the store. The first of these models is dubbed, appropriately, the “sell”
model. The one provides all the benefits a consumer can expect from the product with a fair
profit for the retailer. Signage on the model is so complete that the sell piece practically sells
itself to the shopper.

Alongside the sell piece in a superstore floor display is a “high-end comparison” unit. This not
only has all the features of a sell model, but also some extra semi-useful bells and whistles to
justify its higher price. This leaves just one model, a “low-end comparison” sample, to round out
the product mix. Although it has many of the same features as the sell piece, this model has
sufficiently fewer features to allow a salesperson to convince a shopper that its lower price point
makes it less of a bargain.
With all three SKU models in position, the superstore salesperson is now ready to step the
prospective customer through a demonstration leading to a sale. In this way, a prospect attracted
by the price of one sample can easily be shown the advantages of another. Customers enter your

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