Kishore Biyani's Future Group is still bullish on retail business, with a record growth of 87 percent in sales for its value formats in October, 2008. But Reliance Retail, is not happy with its lacklustre festive season performance. According to unconfirmed reports it has even begun to close down non-performing stores.
Spencer's Retail, the retailing arm of RPG group is one of the country's oldest retailers. According to a report in ET, it is also not happy with its festive season sales this year.
"Earlier we used to have bumper sales on all 7-8 days leading up to Diwali. But this year, we saw such sales only on Dhanteras (two days before Diwali)," said Sanjiv Goenka, Vice Chairman, RPG Enterprises, who heads the group's retail business.
RPG has decided to pare its revenue target for this year by as much as 22% to Rs. 14 billion. It has also decided to close 56 (12%) of its stores in the last three months, due to high rents with low revenues generated.
Despite the blip in the business the group is continuing with its growth strategy and will invest Rs 25 billion expansion of its retail network in the next two years.
According to reports circulating among the real estate owners, the group is also aggressively pursuing the policy of renegotiating and rationalising lease rentals on the properties it has hired in the past few months. The current rates are "just not acceptable," says Goenka.
Bharti Wal-Mart Venture
In the meantime, Bharti Wal-Mart, the 50:50 cash and carry joint venture between Bharti and Wal-Mart, which has scheduled to rollout its first wholesale store from Punjab in India in the first half of calendar 2009, has started registration of membership for bonafide business owners in Punjab.
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Posted By : Mohammed Khaja |
November 19, 2008 13:14 |
Retail is now very down |
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