In His Shoes: Imran Virji, Regal Shoes

Imran virji, md, regal shoes has been observing retailers moving into fast lanes by changing their strategic positions. He, too, saw an opportunity to help rebuild the embattled retail icon, preserve thousands of jobs, and turn it back into the powerhouse it once was. Imran shares his views with s&a’s amit chopra.

Regal Shoes had been saddled with enormous old house retail concepts that Imran thought were a “one-size-fits-all” approach, which is not effective anymore in the changing environment. Imran says,“That has restricted the business in every way possible, from prospects for expansion to creating a development strategy. We realized that its time we change our retail outlook and initiated our retail concept stores. It’s been a significant milestone.”

Developing a change management strategy provides direction and purpose for change management plans. The management at Regal Shoes have been mulling over these changes for a while. The retailer had to upgrade its supply chain, improve brand placements and product quality. The stores had to be refurbished and present an up market feel. These were all distinctly different changes, and each required change management to be successful. Each impacts people and how they do their job. Each can suffer from slow adoption and low utilization. Each has risks associated with people not becoming engaged or resisting the change.

When his time was not focused on sourcing, Imran was working on restructuring the business. “We’ve just undertaken a period of significant and sizeable change in the company. This is a fresh new year for us. We’ve reached the bottom of the curve from a restructure point of view, and now we’re starting to revitalize and show significant signs of business improvement in both sales and profit.” With nearly 60 years in retail, and a sizeable market pull and professional history that includes retail and distribution, he had the right experience to turn Regal Shoes around.