Research on Fashion Retail Management Essay Example

sprawling space, prime locations and coffee shops enhance the customers’ shopping experience.

Mission Statement

At Westside, the mission is to be the most preferred and consistently profitable retailer.

In order to achieve this goal, they have developed a comprehensive understanding of their needs, strive to win the confidence of the consumer and offer best in class products with affordable prices. * We shall be in the forefront of fashion and our services by anticipating and exceeding the expectations of the customers. * Our leadership will be the product of our styling, quality and service consciousness. We continue to scale new heights of excellence through teamwork in an atmosphere that encourages creativity and innovativeness * It is our policy to satisfy he customers with the range, value and the products we offer.

Key points about Westside

Westside Format: Mid-price offerings, private label fashion Launch: 1998, in Bangalore (erstwhile Littlewoods, a UK-based store)

Selling proposition: Affordable style and quality merchandise

Key categories: Apparel and footwear Store size: 15,000-30,000 square feet

Presence: 57 stores in 23 cities

Plans: To open eight-ten stores in the current financial year

Organisational structure: Annual Report: Financial report of TRENT Statements of assets and liabilities:

The above is the annual report of Trent (Standalone). From the comparison done of the financial reports, segment wise revenue and statement of assets and liabilities of the financial years 2010 and 201, we can analyse that:

• As of 31st march 2011, the Trent Company has reported a profit of Rs. 4, 303. 71 lakh with a Turnover of Rs. 67,395. 10 lakh whereas, the TATA has reported a profit of Rs. 253. 45 lakh with a turnover of Rs. 152,029. 64 lakh.
• The percentage of share holding of
  

the company is 68. 68%

Target Customer:

• Demographic: The store is mainly targeting the family as a whole.
• Economic: The products are of the range Rs. 399-Rs. 1499 per unit mainly concentrating on the upper middle class and the lower upper class.
• Psychographic: The merchandise in the store has kept in mind the changing trends and the lifestyle of the consumer.

Store location: Westside has a number of store in Ahmedabad, Bengaluru, Chennai, Delhi, Ghaziabad, Gurgoan, Hyderabad, Indore, Jaipur, Kolkata, Lucknow, Mumbai, Nagpur, Noida, Pune, Surat and Vadodara. The stores are located at convenient locations for easy access by the target customers. Store operations: The Westside stores, the predominantly private label fashion apparel format, continue to be the main stay of the retailing business of the company. This format over the years has been rolled out across the country and currently covers over 33 cities.

In the year under review, eleven new stores were opened – Mangalore (City Centre Mall), Kanpur (Z Square Mall), Chandigarh (Tricity Mall), Chennai (Express Avenue Mall), Bangalore (Innovation Mall), Delhi (Ambience Mall), Aurangabad (Prozone Mall), Coimbatore (Brookefields Mall), Jabalpur (Samdariya Mall), Hubli (Max Mall) and Goa (Caculo Mall). In the first quarter of the current financial year three further stores have been opened in Bhopal (DB Mall), Mumbai (Infinity Mall – Malad) and Varanasi (Dhanushree Complex), taking the

total number of operational Westside stores to 57.

During FY10-11, as can be observed from the above chart the Company recorded eleven new store openings – being the highest in any year since the inception of this format. In many respects, this was facilitated by the pipeline of acceptable retail real estate at more reasonable rates and contracted mostly during the economic slowdown. The conviction of the Board and the management on the attractiveness of the Westside format as a business model was one of the primary reasons to continue expansion of the chain during the earlier slowdown, when several peers had otherwise scaled down their roll-out plans.

Further, during the year under review, the like-for-like sales growth of Westside stores was encouraging, especially in the first three quarters. As in the previous years, we continue to take the following approaches in operating and expanding this format: Private label vs branded merchandize: We continue to emphasize the role of private label merchandize and Westside is ranked in the top quartile in terms of proportion of private label merchandize to overall Westside Stores – Like for Like Sales Growth A Enterprise19 revenues.

We believe higher private label content facilitates not only realization of better margins but also affords other benefits like control over the merchandize design and quality – which should allow for a better competitive position in the medium term. At the same time, the intent is to make the offering complete and collectively more attractive through the inclusion of select brands that account for up to 15% of the overall merchandize range on offer.

Size of Westside stores: We vary the size of planned Westside stores based on

various factors including the immediate micro-market, mall v/s standalone presence and leasehold economics. However, empirical evidence seems to suggest a size not exceeding twenty thousand square feet selling area is preferable (unless the location on offer was seen to be highly attractive and as an exception), since lifestyle department stores much larger in area face viability issues and consequently limit the geographies that can be viewed as markets.

At the same time, the attempt is to ensure that there is a credible range on offer for the stores to be attractive destinations for shopping. Further, during the period under review, we have continued to emphasize improving the efficiency of our supply chain to effectively replenish our store network and significantly improve merchandize availability levels in stores.

While we seek to exercise restraint on costs, we have consciously chosen to invest in areas like significantly refurbishing the look and feel of certain stores in the portfolio, (on lines of he Army Navy Westside store in South Mumbai) a more robust operations organization and a warehouse management system. We believe incurring of these additional costs on the above initiatives is warranted especially from a long term business model sustainability perspective, and we expect to realize tangible benefits over the medium term.

In the period under review, there have been cost pressures across line items including: sharply higher merchandize input costs given the rally in commodity prices; increase in wage bill (with minimum wage levels witnessing sharp increase in several States); also fuelled by improved hiring sentiment across industries; higher energy costs in States like Maharashtra and escalating Common Area Maintenance charges in select malls; and increase in tax costs (service

tax on rentals, higher VAT in most States and the 10% excise on branded garments).

These pronounced cost pressures across several line items and the significant inflation levels in various categories in the recent quarters is increasingly a cause for concern. In summary, despite various challenges, including the earlier economic slowdown and the recent cost pressures, Westside as a format continues to be profitable and as stated previously, the intent is to further scale up presence by opening as many new stores in the near to medium term, subject to availability of acceptable retail locations and estimated viability of economics at the store level.

Store Formats: Westside stores are Department stores. These are the general merchandise retailers offering various kinds of quality products and services. A department store is a retail establishment which specializes in satisfying a wide range of the consumer's personal and residential durable goods product needs; and at the same time offering the customer a choice of various merchandise lines, at variable price points, in all product categories.

Department stores usually sell products including apparel, furniture, home appliances, electronics, and additionally select other lines of products such as paint, hardware, toiletries, cosmetics, photographic equipment, jewellery, toys, and sporting goods. Certain department stores are further classified as discount department stores.

Department stores are usually part of a retail chain of many stores situated around a country or several countries.

Conclusion

Trent has entered the retail industry in 1998 with Westside, its apparel and fashion brand. Thirteen years on the company has, with the addition of international fashion brands Silsley and imminent entry of Zara and Top Shop, it crafted a multi prolonged presence in the ever expanding segment.

Westside and

its siblings have enabled Tent itself to establish itself in a rapidly transforming retail landscape that has seen a number of Indian and foreign brands jostling for customers and their loyalty. Westside has emerged as a successful business, with a base of customer base of over 800,000 people many of whom swear by the cut and the fit, style and price of the chain’s offerings. Thus, we can conclude that Westside is one of the profitable and a promising fashion retailer.