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U.S. retail guru has plenty of tips for India
Wednesday, 05 November 2003, 20:30 IST
NEW DELHI: How to turn shoppers into buyers? Ask Harry Friedman, international retail guru who has plenty of tips for Indian firms.
"It's show time," Friedman, head of The Friedman Group, told executives at a seminar here Wednesday.
His company was set up in 1980 and is retail's largest consulting and training organisation with over 500,000 clients worldwide, including Nike, Neiman Marcus, Kodak, Bata Shoes and Hallmark Cards.
"India is a great marketplace but the retail industry here is terribly unsophisticated," Friedman told IANS.
"The stores are so inaccessible and the way to reach them is so difficult and dirty. We need to create an environment that will be pleasant for the shopper."
His group has now tied up with India's Pearl Academy of Fashion and will target lifestyle stores to start with, "since that is our area of expertise".
The man who authored the best-selling book "No Thanks, I'm Just Looking" himself fell in love with selling at the age of 15 when he sold garden furniture.
On how they would tackle family-run stores in India, he said, "With so many malls coming up in India, they need it the most. It's business; if you can't survive, you die."
He also plans to hold workshops for executives of smaller stores to familiarise them with the group's products and programmes.
The retail industry with total global sales of $6.6 trillion is the world's largest private industry. In India, market studies indicate a rapid growth in organised retailing from two percent of the total retail industry to 20 percent by the end of the decade.
Listing three key factors that influence profit margins, he said, "The first is the conversion rate or the number of customers that actually buy products after entering a shop, the second would be the average sale per person and third, whether the shopper asks for the same salesperson when he returns."
In his book, Friedman also suggests that a customer should never be approached from the front, as he considers that his private space.
Ask him how he knows that, and he says, "I just know. I observe people. If I haven't made a sale in the past, I have tried to analyse why that happened."
With the executives, he stressed the importance of putting up a show for the buyer and for the salesperson to be a trained professional rather than a clerk.
"A research in Australia on McDonald's showed that just the question 'Would you like fries with that?' accompanying an order translated into $250 million a year."
The audience, meanwhile, had mixed reactions.
One executive, who had his reservations, said, "It seems aimed at the superstores, which form not even five percent of the stores in India and that too in the bigger cities. Like Gandhi, I believe India lives in its villages."
However, Fashion Design Council of India executive director Vinod Kaul, who also worked with chains like Bata and Benetton in the past, was quite hopeful.
"I would say, particularly in fashion, with prêt becoming big in fashion, and many stores tying up with designers, this will be helpful. In fact, at this point, it is quite critical."
Source: IANS
Source: IANS