At Kolkata’s Quest Mall, the best deal of the day starts at midnight this summer! Yes, you heard that right. The mall is all set to re-launch its flagship event, Midnight Summers at Quest, at the summer solstice, June 17, 2016.
Shops in the mall will operate at regular hours – up to 8:30pm and then at 9pm, they will be thrown open to shoppers again up to midnight, but this time with exciting deals and discounts.
After last year’s success – the night turned into a complete shopping frenzy with exciting offers and discounts of up to 50 per cent across all brands, festive activities like fireworks display, caricature drawing and a selfie booth – the mall has decided to make the midnight sale a yearly event.
The success of the Midnight Sale was comparable to other popular offline formats like Black Friday sales and Boxing Day sales.
This Year’s Draw
Last year, the mall authorities noticed that food outlets, both casual and fine dine – which regularly run past midnight every day – only registered incremental sales of 15 per cent in comparison to any other Friday. It was the bargains that pulled people to the mall with stores registering footfalls till after 1 am.
To keep up with evolving demands, the mall has added many new deals and introduced new initiatives to keep consumers engaged.
Says VP, Quest Properties India Limited, Sanjeev Mehra, “This year we have undertaken several initiatives to ensure the success of the event keeping in mind the convenience of our patrons as well as free flow of traffic.”
Mehra gives a sneak peek at some of this year’s features:
- We have collaborated with Kolkata Police and chalked out a traffic and parking plan for chauffer driven cars.
- We have a tie-up with Uber and are providing special packages to consumers. There will also be an Uber kiosk in the mall to provide shoppers with assistance in booking cabs.
- Last year there were 60 participating brands, and this year the participation has increased up to 95 brands.
- New brands like Thomas Pink, Atesbar by INC5, Steve Madden Hamley’s and Calvin Klein Underwear are also participating in the sale this year.
- There is a luxury Pop-Up Trunk show by Giorgio Armani on the ground floor which is sure to be an exciting proposition.
- There will be a special contest. We will put up a ‘Weigh your Bag’ counter and the five heaviest bags will win an exciting prize – a two night stay at the uber-luxury resort, Polo Towers Shillong.
- There is a countdown timer to incite excitement among the shoppers.
- There will be free sampling of beverages by Au Bon Pain and desserts by Forever Yogurt.
“An aggressive social media campaign has been launched to ensure maximum footfalls this year. This year the post reach has already crossed 2.3 lakhs, therefore we are expecting a proportional gain in footfall,” he adds.
The Profitable Business of Sale
Last year, Quest recorded footfalls of around 90,000 in three hours and an inflow of over 5,000 cars, which is 10 times the average footfalls for three hours at any point of time at Quest Mall.
The mall did a business of Rs 3 crore(in three hours) and a Facebook post reach of around 1 lakh in three days (June 17 – June 19, 2015).
The top 10 brands (sales-wise) averaged more than Rs 10 lakh in sale.
Mehra says, “The million rupee busters were Michael Kors, Vero Moda, DKNY, ONLY, Forever New last year.”
He adds that the mall expects to break last year’s records and their retailers are going to that extra mile to make sure that happens.
