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Most memorable advertisements in Indian market that still holds its key Brand Promise & relevance.

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As I embark on writing my first blog and let me give you a brief about my professional life so far… I am a Retail professional having over 17 years of work experience in Branding, Advertising and Retail sectors. I would like to share my wisdom with all of my friends in my blog i.e. fascinatingretail.blogspot.com

My first blog is dedicated to Advertising and marketing communications done by some of Indian brands that are still relevant and has helped their brand owners create an empire. These are classic brand cases and would take my readers ( most of Indian countrymen) into nostalgic journey.

a) Amul :  The evergreen  Amul girl character used so efficiently in advertising that it still remains
fresh and relevant fulfilling the brand promise. A classic example of making a brand stay relevant and long lived in consumer’s minds.[/vc_column_text][vc_separator type=”transparent” up=”25″ down=”0″][vc_row_inner row_type=”row” type=”full_width” text_align=”left” css_animation=””][vc_column_inner][vc_column_text]Brand Promise of the brand is Honesty, credibility built by offering best products to its consumers.

A Brand that is owned by the milk producers of Gujarat is an example as to how an entrepreneurial spirit of farmers grow to become world’s largest coop federation serving millions of consumers across the world. Amul girl and its punchier & humor & catchy advertisements based on current affairs makes the brand stay relevant even in today’s times.

Hats off to wonderful creative team Amul creative campaigns

B) Fevicol : Another classic example of how to keep brand alive for over 35 years, brand owned by Pidilite Industries has created an empire with its brand ” Fevicol”. Kudos to its advertising agency O&M india. I am great admirer of Piyush Pandey and his work.

Brand Promise: A bond built to last forever.

Who can forget this commercial from Fevicol which is now a master piece in Indian advertising.

Conclusion: First principle of Brand building is ” stay true to your DNA” i.e. promise you want your brand to make to its users.

I wish all upcoming brand managers all the very best in making their brand stay relevant for ages.

YouTube video

Love to all budding marketeers,

Want a successful Sales career — Go & Develop Right Attitude.

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I am a firm believer that people remember only stories and not management jargons when it comes to real life. During one of my recent interactions with a couple of brand & social influencers, I realized that how important Story-telling is for upcoming entrepreneurs or budding professionals.

So keeping this narrative in the background let me try to share few tips on how to be a great salesman. (As most of us would be doing our sales budgeting or forecasting for 2018).

Story:

Our parents play an important role in carving out our personality, our character, our ethos by guiding us throughout our childhood.

In our story there exists one such family comprising of our main protagonist (son) and His father. Our main protagonist /hero lived with his family among his other 5 siblings. His father worked as Electric plant supervisor, and his mother worked at a bank. His father taught him to work hard and not to be tempted by street life.

Like any other kids of his age, our main protagonist (son) also used to ask his father to buy him new toys, gifts etc; And on one such occasion his father called him and asked his son to sell his old T-shirt which he had worn only once.

Father: How much do you think this T-shirt would cost now?

Son: $1/-

Father: Good, you must go and sell it for $2.

Here comes the first tip:

  1. a)Conceive & believe that you can do whatever tasks come your way.

Son: Ok father. I shall do it.

The little boy then took his sparingly used t-shirt and washed it with fragrant softeners, steam ironed it (made it look like new) and took it to neighborhood community market and started showing to his friends & local market customers and finally managed to sell it for $2 after 6 hours of hard work.

Son: Father, here you go. And he hands over $2 to his father.

Father goes to the cupboard and brings out brand new white shirt.

Father: Good Son, now you take this new white shirt and sell it for $200/-.

Son readily accepts the task & nods in confirmation

Son kept wondering as to why his father is doing this to him, which idiot would pay $200 for a $10 shirt, he kept exploring various possibilities, meeting local merchants but never gave up. He stumbled upon a friend who was going for a soccer match and mentioned that their favorite soccer team is playing county match.

As they say, luck favors those who strive for success with their hard work, the hero of my story (little boy) gets an idea and he requests his friend to take him along with him.

On reaching football ground, little boy somehow managed to get close to football players who were very popular. He requested those football players to autograph on his shirt.

He then took this shirt to a community market and puts the shirt on auction and to his surprise, the crowd got really interested in owning autographed shirt & that shirt was bought within 30 mins from the time it was put on auction and guess the price ….. It got whopping $2000/-.

Son (goes to his father): father take $2000/- I have accomplished the task.

Father (with tears in his eyes): Congrats son, my prayers are with you, you shall be a successful man in life one day.

Learnings from this story:

  1. a)Conceive: Never refuse or reject any task or project. Conceive it as done. Have faith in yourself and if required, learn or acquire skills to do that task or collaborate to build teams in case of startups ventures.

So whatever the targets/budgets are assigned to you by your company, never look at the big figure rather try to conceive ways as to HOW it can be achieved rather than stating, it’s not possible.

Focus on HOW it can be achieved and not on WHY it cannot be done.

  1. b)Believe in Yourself: If there is anyone who could do that task, is YOU only.
  2. c)Action: Never ever Give up & Try hard every time you hit a roadblock.

Life from time to time throws challenges at us and we should face it head-on rather than giving in to those challenges.

Remember “For those who dare to dream, there is the whole new world to win”.

Hope my attempt at developing a correct sales attitude with storytelling narration would help my readers & followers in setting their targets for 2018 & same principle could also be implemented in setting our Life goals.

I wish all my readers a very happy & prosperous New Year 2018.

And do you know who this little boy was when he grew up…? He grew to become legendary Michael Jordan– the best basketball player world has ever seen.

Redefining COGS may help overcome turbulent times for Middle eastern Retailers or Is it Time for Retail 3.0 ?

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sales commissions etc which varies with sales going up or coming down.

Off lately most retailers were focusing on Rent cost and staff costs in order to reduce by bringing some kind of optimization in their efficiencies leading to store closures. They try to cut down on their expenses like marketing costs etc in order to turn around the profitability of their retail stores.

With the change in the middle eastern economy & in an era of downturn in petrodollars and drop in tourists numbers due to geopolitical conflict and drop in consumer’s spending power & tighter financing options from financial institutions has led to turbulent times for most of the retailers, who earlier depended upon opening new stores as one of the important growth metrics for gaining market share.

Future is for those who embrace reality soonest by:

  1. a)Re-look at fixed costs especially Rentals:

It’s time to treat malls/landlords as your team members and discuss the possibility of revising current lease agreements or rent-free period as any reduction, irrespective of how small it may be will help your brand keep floating in turbulent times.

  1. b)Re-look at Cost of goods sold (COGS):

The game-changer for most retailers would be in COGS, so start with listing down all the cost components of your supply chain, your freight costs, insurance costs, procurement costs, production costs (in case of manufacturers cum retailers).

Try to bring some efficiency or cost reduction in COGS; as any reduction even as low as 3%  would have a positive impact on overall P&L by min 2.5X  (since low cost of goods means better attractive pricing options for customers thus higher probability of better product sales thus increasing your top line).

  1. c)Stop overseeing Marketing cost as an expense:

It’s so wrong to consider marketing cost as an expense, unfortunately, Good accounting practices put marketing header into expense head but speaking from a business perspective, it is actually an investment that company makes over long period time to build its brand equity which is actually realized in dollars once the brand is acquired or sold. Marketing efforts pay in keeping the brand afloat in turbulent times.

  1. d) Look more macroscopic rather than microscopic :

Consider overall retail division of a company from its overall P&L and not by outlet by outlet P&L as practiced by most companies using SBU concept philosophy as an excuse. From my experience, I can confidently say that out of 10 operating stores, 3 stores would fall under “superstar” category and 4-5 stores would be “potential stores or close to operating breakeven stage” and 2 stores would be loss-making stores which need to be identified and closed provided brand owners or managers have gone through above checklists or points mentioned.

  1. e)Adapt or Re-tweak your business model:

Downtimes provide an excellent opportunity to businesses to look at their internal strengths & weaknesses and bring some kind of product rationalization in their offerings, streamlining their cost of procurements, better more efficient supply chain may be implemented for example Just in Time or Vendor-managed Inventory systems. Explore markets outside their operating territories as it is better to spread risk to the larger region. Look at franchising as a revenue model or even licensing.

  1. f)Adapt technology and Omnichannel strategy:

I have written previously on Omnichannel strategy in my blogs and on my LinkedIn posts. I feel sooner we retailers accept this reality better it would be for the entire retail fraternity.

Online stores are now looking towards brick & mortar stores and converting them into smart stores.

A Recent example is Jack Ma’s Alibaba who notched USD 25 Billion sales on a single day’s sale in China much higher than black Friday sales in the United States of America. (On 11th November 2017)

Alibaba is converting 100,000 small mom-pop & convenience stores into SMART stores by providing them with unified systems so that they can order, store goods and become distribution centers for these goods. Alibaba has launched an app called Ling Shou Tong, meaning “connect retail.” Convenience stores are given suggestions on what to procure and how to display merchandise. The goods are shipped from dedicated Alibaba warehouses, obviating middlemen. In theory, that improves their profit.

Hope Middle Eastern hypermarket retailers like Carrefour, Lulu are closely monitoring the transition that’s taking place as to how technology would reform the retail scenario with the advent of Machine learning algorithms and programs that are being developed.

I call this revolution as RETAIL 3.0.

Are we ready to embrace Retail 3.0 in our retail brand?

I would be more than happy to assist & discuss with all my fellow retailers to incorporate few of my learnings into their brand operations and grow in the new economy.

Check out the video on Alibaba’s 11-11 historic singles day phenomenon:

YouTube video

Management lesson learned from a Sipahi (Indian Army soldier)

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There is a saying that “There is no better teacher than Travel” and I witnessed the truth of this statement last month when I visited India for my Diwali vacations and took time off to mix this pleasure trip with some spiritual visit and decided to visit Jammu & Kashmir.

I boarded a J&K transport bus and my co-seat passenger was a Sipahi of Indian Army, who was travelling on his duty, fully armoured as a part of his duty protocol; since the seat was not spacious and weather was cold I was wearing my winter gear and I requested my co-passenger “Sir, why don’t you keep your automatic rifle on floor so that we both could sit comfortably”.

The reply from soldier was prompt- mixed with pride and humbleness, “Saab Ji, I am on duty and for us, ambush can occur anytime, and God forbids, if ambush situation arises, I should be ready for action and not waste even a second in reaching out for my rifle”

He continued “Saab Ji, its one split second that decides whether we stay alive or we die”.

I smiled on hearing this and turned towards the bus window watching the scenic beauty outside but kept thinking about one big management lesson that I learned from this soldier.

“Always remain Prepared, You may never know when opportunity struck and you need to give your best shot in order to grab opportunity”.

With so much pain in outside world due to current economic challenges, so many job losses, entrepreneurs looking for venture capital, we all can learn from this soldier i.e. Be Prepared with your Pitch presentation/ business proposals or with your enhanced skill set so when Life offers you an opportunity, You are ready to Grab it with both hands.

Love what you do, make it your passion and Never ever Give up.

Post reaching my destination, I shook hands with this soldier and gave him a hug to convey my thanks for his teachings and we bid Goodbye to each other.

                                 (Picture used for Illustration purpose only)

Somewhere back in my mind, few questions still remain….

What made this soldier, so dedicated towards his profession? What makes him sacrifice all the pleasurable things in life that we civilians run towards our whole life?

Let me tell you that soldier was not very well educated, yet he got trained in a manner that he could provide me with my life lesson.

I would encourage all my friends & Linkedin connections to share their one learning /lesson which they learned from their experience or from some stranger. It would be nice to learn by sharing our wisdom with each other.

Happy Retailing folks!!!

Love

omnichannel retail

Tips for Running Business in era of Millennials

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As the world is changing very rapidly so is the consumer’s buying behavior which is continuously going through a transformation. One such example is our kids, you all will agree that they spend more time watching YouTube videos, engaging in apps like snapchat, Instagram, engaging with their Xbox, PlayStation rather than spending quality time playing outdoors or spending time with their friends.

 This very change in kid’s time-spent behavior as made brands like Toys R Us file for bankruptcy & restructuring of debts.

So the valid question is as to How to do business in the era of Millennials?

I am listing down few parameters which would help SMEs or upcoming Retail entrepreneurs to tackle their brand while marketing or selling to millennials.

  1. A)Go lean – World of business is changing.

In previous decade we never heard about brands like Uber, Facebook, Youtube etc.

  • Uber is the world’s biggest transport provider without owning a single vehicle
  • Facebook & YouTube are the world’s biggest media houses without even producing or owning a single content from their side.

So my advice to entrepreneurs is Go leaner. “Don’t invest in creating big Infrastructure”.

A Company which is very dear to me has made this mistake of creating big infrastructure in terms of supply chain, manufacturing, inventory, in return, they face huge pressure on their Gross margins in order to accommodate overheads and hence current economic scenario of decline in consumer’s spending has posed a severe threat to their operations.

If you are in the manufacturing sector, look for outsourcing your complete manufacturing, get rid of your depreciating assets like plants & machinery. Bring efficiencies in your supply chain by correct forecasting and avoid warehousing costs for storing Inventories which is an important cost in P&L statement.

  1. B)Find your Unique strength :

Conduct competitive advantage analysis for your company vs its competitors, analyze as to what are your strengths and weaknesses. I am sure every organization has one key strength or one key Hero product which can drive the whole turnaround strategy for the organization. The task is to identify this core Hero product/service or strength.

I would like to quote an example here of Nestlé’s Maggi brand, The brand core strength is its “ 2-minute” promise. All these years, this promise has created entry barriers for several brands who tried to copy Maggi. Brands like Nippon & our very own Indian home-grown brand Patanjali tried to copy Maggi noodles but failed.

Nestle, in order to reinforce its category leadership, launched Maggi oats which were never tried & unheard in any market and today this variant owns 90% of the market share in healthy Oats foods category.

  1. C)The speed of transactions:

Increase your number of transactions/ sales/ increasing your customer base.

Entrepreneurs and business in order to achieve growth, they avail working capital loans, collateral loans & goes into debt. This debt puts a lot of pressure on Cash flows. The ratio of debt vs inflow tends to fall apart and this move could be suicidal for the organization.

Entrepreneurs tend to focus on their business model more and ignore the importance of cash flows.

Focus on account receivables and its aging. It is not only a function of finance dept but the owners as well need to focus on this aspect of the business.

SMEs should focus on Organic scalability rather than debt infused scalability. I know various retail organizations in the Middle East who uses bank’s easy collateral loans to drive the expansion of their businesses compromising on debt vs inflow ratio. This is one reason that most retail companies worldwide are struggling to survive the decline in consumer’s purchasing power.

  1. D)There is no such thing as “ First Mover advantage”, it has changed to “ Fast mover advantage”

Gone are the days wherein First mover advantage was your core strategic competitiveness, now in current era while catering to most demanding, highly knowledgeable customer segment of millennials, we need to be a fast mover.

What happened to Nokia & Motorola?

They were all having first mover advantage but they were not fast in adapting to rapidly changing customer’s requirements which demanded more engaging operating systems and smartphone.

Apple falls under “fast mover” category and is ruling this segment.

Well, I can write a thesis on Retail and Management topics, but I am sure these 4 points listed above would force each of my readers to introspect, use their creative juices and come up with innovative solutions to sail the current economic turbulent times.

Happy Retailing Folks

Love

Ritesh Mohan

My interpretation of learning from book ” Art of War – sun tzu”

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Dear friends,

As most of us are losing our habit of constantly reading books, journals in times of digital & social media invasion and an era of online streaming of movies, we all are getting too engrossed in technology which is hampering all of us to grow as human beings who were by DNA once programmed to be enterprising, innovative & hard working.

My current blog is dedicated to those who have lost their habit of reading books and it is my effort to summarize some of my learnings /key notes from famous books that I have come across. (let me be honest that I am trying to come out of social media addiction myself…)

(Disclaimer: my learnings /keynotes from particular book is completely my opinion and may differ from individual to individual).

Recently I was gifted a wonderful book called “Art of war-sun tzu”. Below are some of my key take outs which could be correlated to corporate world.

  1.      a) All wars consume 3 main resources i.e. Time, Money & Energy.

In corporate world we compete with our services/ products on daily basis and try to win mind space/ market share from our competitors; Professionals invest their time, money and energy in order to win consumers & sell their goods/services.

Brands should know when to communicate (timing), what to communicate (message) and how to communicate (media planning) and monitor its end result (call to action through market research).

  1. b) Ignore choleric comments:

Sometimes competition passes comments or runs campaigns in order to irritate you or their targeted brands. (for example: Coke’s campaign in India in 1990’s official sponsor of world cup cricket vs Pepsi’s response – Nothing official about it).

Always remember, ‘Wars are won by people who control their emotions’. Don’t allow your emotional quotient to overtake rational or logical behavior.

  1. c)Know yourself first and Opponent second.

We need to first completely understand our strengths, weaknesses prior to even enticing or acknowledging competition.

We all have seen a famous Bollywood blockbuster “ Dangal” wherein the key protagonist Aamer khan first studies weakness of his daughter and train her to overcome them prior to even attempting to compete with other wrestlers. Knowing yourself is most important.

Understand your weaknesses and overcome them to make it your strengths.

  1. d) Prepare beforehand to take your competition unprepared.

Winners prepare themselves before hand to face tough situations.

We all have heard story of Ant & grasshopper in our childhood days wherein Ant works throughout year to collect food for winter season vis a vis Grasshopper who is flamboyant and doesn’t sustain itself when weather changes.

We all brand managers, retail professionals should ensure that we work like an Ant i.e. taking care of our brand strategies in terms of its market share, inventory planning, marketing, customer service and implement continuous improvement drive in whatever we do in our professional lives.

I hope sharing of some learning will help in some way or other to my friends, upcoming entrepreneurs, budding brand managers to develop their brands in better & more successful way.

Cheers

Ritesh

#nevergiveup #believeinyourself.

Free-nomics_-IDEAS-are-the-new-currency-for-doing-business-in-New-Age-465x700-1

Freenomy or Freenomics – A strategic tool for creating disruption & gaining Market share.

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My inspiration for writing this article comes from telephone card vendors distributing small pamphlets outside popular malls/hypermarkets in Dubai/ Sharjah.

My article is dedicated to all hardworking people who make their living by selling telecom products & services.

How often do you come across a pamphlet or brochure which says, broadband 4G connection free for 4 months including the hardware if you subscribe to it for a year?

“Lease now and avail 4 months EMIs free” – in case of realtors.

As a management professional and hardcore marketer, this aroused my curiosity as I felt there is a science behind giving anything Free in lieu of a subscription. How does the economic model work?

Why Google is offering its search engine as free to worldwide users?

Why Skype is offering free VOIP calls and video chats free to its users?

Why YouTube is offering free video content to its viewers?

Post deep diving myself & doing research on this topic, I came across an interesting term i.e. Freenomics… which I shall explain very briefly:


Free-nomics is a business model that promotes the idea of businesses giving away their goods/services because it will result in more customers entering the market.

This is different than Sampling which is just giving away some samples in hopes of attracting new customers or doing pro bono work to help a charity or singular individual.

It involves giving away something for free to everyone and for an ongoing period of time.

While Free-nomics is not a new concept, it has certainly gained in popularity by those using social media. Some examples outside of social media include Skype letting people use their basic service for free to do video calls and Google’s free email service to attract users, which in turn, hopes to attract advertisers.

a)    Evolution and where are we heading:

Our society has drastically changed over time. First, we used to have the Agricultural age, followed by the Industrial Age. Today, we live in the Information age.

What is next? (That’s the big question)

According to many, it is actually our creative power, our brain! It is our limitless ability to generate new IDEAS, imagine and create new opportunities, conceive new products or services, invent new business models. Note that we are all equipped with this idea generation ability: it is given to us and it is FREE to use.

For the first time in our history, we are approaching the age of UNLIMITED resources. The Internet has just accelerated this trend. IDEAS are the new currency in the new economic world.

The dominant business model on the internet today is making money by giving things away. Much of that is merely the traditional media model of using free content to build audiences and selling access to them to advertisers. But an increasing amount of it falls into the free-sample model: because it is so cheap to offer digital services online, it doesn’t matter if 99% of your customers are using the free version of your services so long as 1% are paying for the “premium version”. After all, 1% of a big number can also be a big number.

For example:

If you want uninterrupted videos on your YouTube, you pay some amount for browsing your favourite shows without any advertisements.

If you want more storage (above 5GB) for your data on the cloud, you pay some fees for buying cloud storage space.

You can listen to your favourite songs online free but if you want to enjoy same songs in offline mode (download) you need to pay minimal subscription fees to the app service providers.

  1. b)Creative disruption:

Bandwidth too cheap to meter/measure gave us YouTube, which is revolutionizing and possibly destroying the traditional television industry, and Skype, which is disrupting the phone industry.

In the Aviation sector, Ryanair or for that matter our Indian airline i.e. INDIGO, for instance, has disrupted its industry by defining itself more as a full-service travel agency than a seller of airline seats.

Many companies have got it. They have successfully entered this new age, Idea Age, the age of unlimited resources.

They have offered:

FREE (Google), FREE e-mail (Hotmail), FREE or unlimited Internet access (AOL), FREE ways to connect with friends (Facebook,  Skype), FREE video entertainment (YouTube), FREE e-cards (Hallmark)…even

FREE cell phones based on purchased minutes of service –commonly called as Payment plans (Etisalat/ Virgin mobile/ Du)…

“FREE Strategy” will soon be required part of any marketing plan.

In case you want to know & develop Freenomy strategy for your brand then I would be more than glad to share my ideas acquired while researching & closely studying this topic. In fact, I am in love with this term “Freenomics”.

Believe me, it’s the most exciting times & period for our generation since Information is never an issue.

You can reach me on riteshmohan@yahoo.com in case this topic also excites you.

Can a business model of fast food Quick service restaurant transform healthcare & wellness sector_

Can a business model of fast food Quick service restaurant transform healthcare & wellness sector?

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My inspiration to write on this topic came when I was approached by a senior personnel of a reputed healthcare chain in India, resulted in our discussion about their future plans and industry overall.

My brief interaction with the senior management of this reputed healthcare chain inspired me to look at healthcare sector more closely as it is already billion dollar industry itself & growing.

With modern times as the life expectancy rate has increased and with the advent of the modern sedentary lifestyle that we all are living in modern cities have given birth to a new breed of Specialty healthcare clinics & centres/hospitals.

I initiated my research limiting myself to Eyecare clinics and my findings have truly amazed me with new age speciality eye care clinics and their business model.

Background:

I limited my scope of the study to two big Eyecare speciality clinics in Southern India, which are now spreading their wings in other parts of the country as well as in the Middle East and the Far East countries.

(I would not like to divulge names of these two eye care chains since the brand name is not important but how they have transformed their business model is what I am going to highlight in my article).

How the Journey started?

Both these chains were started by legendary family icons who were specialist doctors & now being managed by 2nd and 3rdgenerations and it all began with a noble cause which has formed the SOUL of the organization & gave them their WHY (Purpose).

  1)   Startup mentality & Positive state of mind:

Starting small but with limited resources at hand but withclear VISION in mind that they need to provide eye care to the poorest of the poor in economic strata.

Ideation & concept came from the business model of fast food chain business model i.e. turning out millions of dishes (burgers/pizzas) in shortest possible time. Serving good food in the shortest time is the main premise of any Quick Service Restaurant.

These Eyecare speciality chains have adopted the same style of operations i.e. bringing Economies of Scale in their operations by treating the maximum number of patients which drives their fixed costs to go downwards (benefit from economies of scale operations) resulting in bringing down the cost of treatment.

   2) Ethical way for imparting treatment and giving optimum satisfaction to all its patients

These chains treat eye illness like cataracts at so subsidized costs and sometimes free to poor patients who could not afford the high cost of treatments. Their costs are compensated by those patients who could afford to pay for the treatment or are covered by health insurance. Patients are told in advance as to where their fees or cost of treatment would be utilized so that there is transparency which results ingaining TRUST from higher economic strata who feels happy and satisfied that at least their money which he/she is paying towards medical treatment is being utilized to give treatment to poor patients who could hardly afford the treatment.

GIVING selflessly to society is the main objective of Spiritualism.

Such a noble thought, which has turned these brands into million dollar brands and still growing.

3)  Using technology & Six Sigma principle:

– ERP systems keep records of all patients which are made available at the click of a button to any doctor at given point of time. Patients diagnosed with cataract are given appointments for next day surgery.

– Automated queue system; clear indicators of the free patient facility and Paid patient facility.

– Daycare clinics wherein patients need not stay post-surgery but can go back to his/her home same day.

– Using Six Sigma systems:

Eliminating defects in any process – from manufacturing to transactional and from product to service is the main promise of Six Sigma processes which has helped these speciality eye care clinics to scale up faster than any other service provider.

– Optimum utilization of facility:

Treating Operation theatre as Production/ Assembly line i.e. while the earlier patient is being operated in OT, the second patient is being prepared in the preparatory room next to OT so that there is minimal wastage of time and this process brings Operational efficiency thus bringing the cost down.

4) Team management

Challenge comes when you have to manage both technical staffs (doctors) along with paramedical staffs and admin teams. How to bring all of them together and work in a synchronized way is a big task itself.

One of my core learning while studying their business model is the fact these successful eye care speciality clinics chain have mastered the way of Internal communicationright from senior management to lowest ranks of helpers.

Everybody knows what is going on and what needs to be done, they all work as a single unit.

Management has ensured that every member of these clinics shares same VALUES and Purpose (Why) as that of their founders. Their values & ethical principles have been aligned and imbibed in each and every staff member.

 If you analyze, this is the main principle behind Robert Kaplan’s “Balance scorecard” theory.

I would end my article by saluting these founders & visionaries of these Eye care speciality clinics operating in Southern India and their current management who is not only following their founder’s VISION but also showing the world a NEW WAY OF DOING BUSINESS ETHICALLY.

You can reach me on riteshmohan@yahoo.com in case this topic excites you.

Failure is nothing but SUCCESS delayed.

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As I write this blog, there is an advertisement that is playing in back of my mind which says “Dirt is good” (on clothes.. used by popular detergent brand).

I feel it’s a master piece of mass communication which can be translated to the topic that I have chosen for my blog i.e. FAILURE IS GOOD.

“I have not failed, I have just found 10,000 ways that won’t light a bulb.” Edison once quipped.

Key take out learning from this is that one should fall forward and not backward i.e. Learn from the mistakes of others as well as your own.

I recall a statement from famous American writer, Comedian & TV star, Groucho Marx who once said

 “ Learn from the mistakes of others, you can never live long enough to make them all yourself”.

Avoid looking back for too long. Contemplation is good but failing forward is about beginning the next project, starting it very next day.

Focus on what you could have changed in failure phase. Experiment & keep doing it. Never give up. Every discovery or invention came on back of repeated so called failures.

Most importantly you need to look at what’s working and certainly NOT at what’s not working.

Coming from aviation background as aviation is in my genes, I recall one learning which my father had once told me i.e. Pilots are taught not to focus on what’s not working in emergency situations BUT on systems that are functioning.

I don’t mean that by doing so pilots can avoid air crashes etc but this thinking would certainly help pilots develop “Never Give up” attitude.

I would be writing a complete blog on ATTITUDE shortly but successful entrepreneurs always look away from the problem and catalog all their resources which are in their favor and utilize it to overcome any problem or issues.

I would reinforce one key learning to budding entrepreneurs or management students, “Turn your wounds into wisdom”, Learn from failure and bounce back… NEVER GIVE UP.

Wishing all my readers a very happy entrepreneurial journey!!

#NeverGiveUp

Ciao!

aEoeIn-order-to-succeed-the-new-upcoming-malls-have-to-be-developed-according-to-the-customer-needs-and-expectations.-Online-ecommerce-business-was-never-an-issueaE_-465x700

The Retail apocalypse – Transforming role of Leasing professionals and Mall Managers.

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The Retail apocalypse! – is the buzzword that I hear very often within my retail fraternity & in Retail forums while talking to brand owners as well as landlords (mall developers).

The panic words often said are: “Shopping is changing forever! ; Brick-and-mortar stores are dying! ”

This negativity in the retail sector prompted me to write & take a deep dive into the phenomenon that’s taking place in Middle Eastern Retail sector.

In my quest to embark on this challenging topic, I conducted face to face interviews with Retail industry Leaders, various telephonic interviews with my friends in Leasing fraternity and one to one discussion with my retail fraternity members as to how they feel about the challenges that new economy is going to pose and how their job profile would need to adapt to new economy.

I started asking each one of them about the challenges they would be facing in retail leasing in 2018. I got a mixed bag of responses:

Few Main Challenges:

  1. a)E-commerce is posing a severe threat to mall’s footfalls resulting in overall traffic drop which reflects in category decline in spends.
  2. b)Competition from other malls as they try to lure tenants/brands with attractive rent free period options in order to retain tenants in their malls
  3. c)Small retailers are shutting down, bigger ones are not expanding and new brands are being very cautious to enter the market in the current scenario. They prefer playing wait & watch game.
  4. d)Striking a good merchandise mix balance in maintaining a good brand/tenant mix within the mall despite various brand’s shop closures.

Let’s start with the definition of Apocalypse, as per dictionary it means “the final destruction before the end of the world”.

My sincere request to all my fellow Retailers and Retail fraternity members would be instead of thinking of it as the end of the world, we should really be looking at this as the natural evolution of life and business.

If stores can’t adapt to changing trends and technology, they will die of natural causes.If malls fail to impart an exceptional customer experience which millennials desire then they would too fail.

Oftentimes, you walk out of the stores empty-handed, frustrated, and feeling like you just wasted your time. These mass experiences with mediocre customer service are exactly what we are trying to get away from!

Instead, World is moving towards personalized experiences that are tailored to our every need.

Challenging times requires each one of us to do the following:

  1. a)First & foremost stay Positive.
  2. b)Adapt to the current situation & innovate in order to re-engineer your business model.
  3. c)Most of the industry leaders mentioned that 2017 was one of the worst periods and they all are looking forward to 2018 as there are signs of improvement for the economy
  4. d)Positive Economy indicators: Oil prices are becoming stable hovering around USD 62/- per barrel. New VAT implementation is a move to become less dependent on oil resource. Growth in tourist traffic.

All these positive indicators are good indicators for a Retail industry which thrives on customer’s spending and tourist’s inflow.

The retail apocalypse is simply an evolution of our society. People can buy almost anything online now and have it delivered within a few days—if not the same day.

Today, the role of leasing manager/Head has become more dynamic, it has transitioned from traditional property manager to Business Development/ Marcom Manager kind of role.

The new role demands Retail professionals to adapt to new thinking i.e. Instead of being used for the old way of shopping, perhaps malls should transition into venues for live events where people can come together. Closed stores can be put to good use such as exercise spaces, concert venues.

Basically, let’s get creative about how to use the physical space.

Categories that would drive growth in 2018:

  1. a)F&B – with an ever-growing list of innovative food /cuisine concepts this category would be most promising category from revenue generation point of view for malls. The trend of eating out amongst millennials is increasing day by day.
  2. b)Wellness – with more and more people becoming health conscious, the trend for wellness retail is increasing and can be targeted by malls. Hitech Gyms, swimming facilities inside malls, Ayurveda retail concepts and spas would be a growing segment in near future.
  3. c)Rise in speciality concepts like Daiso, Mumuso & other Korean, Japanese concepts would also contribute in helping malls to resist the retail apocalypse.
  4. d)A home segment including Home furnishing: This segment has always been underplayed by the majority of malls due to earlier space limitations, now with changing economy, I foresee this category to do well.
  5. e)Luxury Retail: Luxury is never impacted by any kind of downturn, this category remains evergreen.
  6. f)Family & Entertainment sector: Cinema would drive this sector’s growth especially when KSA has granted permissions to malls to build cinemas in the kingdom.

For Retailers, this is a chance to get creative in their approaches to customers. Clearly, the old method isn’t working, so now the retailers that are still around have a chance to innovate. They need to find new ways to be relevant and think about how they can make customers’ lives easier in our modern, connected world.

For malls & landlords, I have shared my wisdom i.e. on which segments they need to focus; I hope mall owners, mall CEOs would find my insights useful in developing their strategy and budgets for 2018.

I would like to close my article with special mention to Mr Marcello Larizza, GM, Line Investments (lulu group), who quoted “In order to succeed, the new upcoming malls have to be developed according to the customer needs and expectations. Online e-commerce business was never an issue”.

I would be more than happy to share more insights with my retail fraternity members who need cutting-edge solutions to their existing issues. You may feel free to contact me anytime as I strongly believe that by sharing knowledge and wisdom, we all can create a wonderful society and wonderful future. You can reach me onriteshmohan@yahoo.com.