Venu Nair's Quest to Reinvent the Shoppers Stop Mojo

Under the leadership of its Managing Director Venu Nair, India's first department store chain Shoppers Stop is reinventing itself once again with a focus on beauty and private labels along with a host of other initiatives. The question is, will it succeed in recreating its old magic?

- Rasul Bailay

In June last year, Shoppers Stop outbid some of corporate India's heavyweights including Reliance Retail, Tata Group's Tata Cliq and Nykaa to snap up a 1,300 sq. ft. retail space at the Bengaluru airport. The Mumbai-based department store operator has been eyeing that particular space in the Terminal-2 of the airport to open a flagship store of its SS Beauty.

Now, Shoppers Stop is planning to roll out that store in mid-September, ahead of the crucial Diwali-led shopping season.

"It would be something absolutely stunning and different from what we have done so far," said Venu Nair, Managing Director of Shoppers Stop. "The whole look and feel of the beauty store would be absolutely different with very high ceilings, lighting, LEDs right at the entrance, fragrance finder, virtual mirrors and a lot of engagement tools within the store. And, of course, the best of the international brands will be present," Nair added.

Shoppers Stop has a couple of similar beauty flagship stores in the pipeline.

Growth Drivers

Aggressive bidding for the Bengaluru airport's location illustrates Shoppers Stop's new strategy to focus on the burgeoning beauty space as a future growth engine. The Mumbai-based company has also zeroed in on its clutch of private brands as the second pillar of future revenue generation.

Over the years, the country's oldest department store operator renewed its emphasis on its private brand by trimming the number of such labels by more than half to 11 own brands from 25. Currently, 21% of total apparel sales in Shoppers Stop come from the company's private brands.

Private Labels Push

The company which opened its doors way back in 1991 and played an important part in ushering in modern retailing in India has private brands including Kashish occasional wear, Indian fusion brand Haute Curry, menswear Fratini and casual label Life among others.