Will Raymond’s Smaller Metro Roll-out Work?  ( September '9,2003, FE)

Raymond Ltd is looking to increase its presence in smaller towns and cities across India. The company has identified around 100 towns and cities for The Raymonds Showroom (TRS), which showcases Raymond suiting along with brands like Park Avenue, Parx and Manzoni. Apart from foray into the hinterland, the TRS retail chain will also be consolidated in metropolitan cities which have been witnessing a rise in mall culture. Besides, the company has embarked on a point-of-sale data accessing system to link the existing TRS’ across the country and also arrive at consistent quality for visual merchandising across them.

Raymond Ltd group president Nabankur Gupta told FE that the retail growth strategies will be focused in market penetration around these towns. “In the present scenario, we see significant growth opportunities from one lakh to five lakh towns and hence, that’s where our focus will lie,” he added.

Raymond Ltd executive director (retail) Aniruddha Deshmukh said smaller towns and cities form the focus in a big way as the company with around 266 outlets in India in 120 cities is well covered. Towns like Kolhapur and Latur in Maharashtra, Kangra in Himachal Pradesh, Begusarai in Bihar and Durgapur in West Bengal, to name a few, are places which have been identified for establishing TRS. “We have identified around 100 towns and cities which will have Raymond showrooms across the country. We are looking to add 25-30 Raymond outlets this year,” said Mr Deshmukh.

The foray into smaller towns and cities has been backed by research to understand the catchment areas and also on the belief that these centres have the purchasing power for a brand like Raymond. Mr Deshmukh said the identification of these places has been arrived at after undertaking a market potential index study of the cities and also understanding the catchment area which a particular outlet will service.

However, the size of the outlets in these places would be smaller, around 1,500 sq feet, compared to 2,500-3,000 sq feet, which is the size of the outlets in the metros. The rationale behind this scaled down version is that business volumes are not expected to be as large compared to the big metros.

The scaling down is not just restricted to the size but also the price points which would be skewed keeping in mind the purchasing power of the populace of the region. Raymond suiting along with brands like Park Avenue, Parx and Manzoni will be available but the merchandise mix would keeping in mind the affordability of consumers in those regions.

Mr Deshmukh revealed that research indicated certain lacunaes in the services at Raymond showrooms, which are being rectified.

Citing an example, Mr Deshmukh said with clothes, customers choose to touch and feel the product without barriers like personnel or the table, which is being improved upon. “Visual merchandising and aspects like colour blocking are being worked upon in our stores. In visual merchandising, we are speaking to our franchisee outlets to have consistency as far as window display is concerned across all our showrooms,” he added.