India Retail Forum 2014 (IRF’14) flagged off today at Renaissance Hotel, Mumbai. The ongoing event hosted the Masterclass Session on September 16, 2014 in which industry leaders and experts shared the valuable insights on the strength, weakness, opportunity and threats of the retail industry. During the first session, Augistin Alberto Solari, CEO of IDEARETAIL Spa discussed ‘Leveraging the three most important success mantras to grow the retail business-Private Labels, Omni-Channel, and Supply Chain’.
Solari shared excellent insights to take home on how one can develop Private Labels to become real brands, Omni-channel as a way to leverage the web on stores and give customers a better buying experience, and supply chain to put products in the customers’ hands when they want it. He further explained that how one can make the task easier of merging stores supply and customers supply through engaging in a Lean Program that allows to reduce days to store, increase logistic capacity, and much more.
In the first topic, Private Labels as exclusive brands, he said it is the cycle that relates to the per capita income of a country. As learning, one should never look at other departmental stores for strategy making. It is always considering specialty store. Most of the departmental stores in the US died because of the entrance of Speciality Stores. The major challenges in this area are sexy- differentiation and branding; fit- efficiency, position of a brand is in the customer’s mind; relationship with the customer: not only transactional but also bonding.
The next topic was Supply Chain and Solari said, it is all about time, place and quantity. First challenge is to develop a great product and second is to put it in the hands of the customer on time. Working in Supply Chain starts with the customer. There are four important factors in Supply Chain Safety, Punctuality, Comfort and Economy. Omni-channel was the third topic of the session and the industry expert advised that the focus should be on: Any Product-Any Time-Anywhere, so that value is being available to the customers 24×7.
Here, salesperson is the key! If the customer is looking for some product and it is not in stock, then the salesperson can sell it through web and he can get a commission on that sale. It’s better to be close to the customer than far away, to get better chances to reach the goal. Flow of goods must be continuous and in small portions. Reduce chances of making delivery mistake when one is close to the customer.
