Comments
Tata Group’s Infiniti Retail, which runs the nationwide retail chain under Croma brand, plans to add 11-12 new stores this year, but only in cities where it is already present.
Croma opened its 101th store in May. Ajit Joshi, CEO and Managing Director, Infiniti Retail said: “We want go deeper in the existing 16 cities where we are present to get better per square realisation. We believe there are still pockets in the cities where we can expand and it is important to be located close to the consumer.”
In addition, the company wants to focus on the top 25 cities that bring in the largest chunk of revenues in terms of consumer durables and electronics products sales. “Every city that we are present in we want to ensure we have 20 per cent market share,” he added.
Consumer durable and retailers have been facing challenging times in the past two years with the Diwali and Christmas sales being below expectations.
Joshi, however, says consumer sentiment has started improving since May. “June has been exceptional compared to April and May and customers seem to be back in stores and malls,” he added.
Private labels do well Croma has also achieved a fair amount of success as far as its private labels is concerned.
“We have received tremendous amount of encouragement from consumers for our private label branded products.
“This year we are targeting sales of ₹250 crore from our private label product sales. Last year we had earned about ₹183 crore,” Joshi said.
It is now working on introducing its new set of feature-loaded mobile phones and tablets, besides high ticket point items such as side-by-side fridges and small appliances such as food processors. Meanwhile, the company has been using its smaller store format Croma Zip to expand presence in high traffic areas where large format store space is not available, besides airports.
Croma Zip sells technology products such as flat TV screens, mobiles, cameras and accessories.
Croma now reaches out to consumers across 293 cities through its e-commerce platform Croma.com.
“We piloted the same day delivery in Mumbai and extended it to Bangalore and Delhi and we are now trying it in other cities. Our online store gives us revenues worth ₹1.75-2 crore every week,” said Joshi.
Comments
COMMENT NOW
Comments
Comments have to be in English, and in full sentences. They cannot be abusive or personal. Please abide by our community guidelines for posting your comments.
We have migrated to a new commenting platform. If you are already a registered user of TheHindu Businessline and logged in, you may continue to engage with our articles. If you do not have an account please register and login to post comments. Users can access their older comments by logging into their accounts on Vuukle.