Once a side-event that happened in parallel with the main show, the Spectrum Seminar series which is being presented at IIJS 2015 by Gemological Science International (GSI), has now assumed a growing importance. This year, many of the seminars have seen large turnouts.

A popular session that was attended by smaller retailers from different parts of the country as well as many students was the seminar entitled Single to Multi-store. The theme was presented by an eminent panel of retailers who had expanded into multi-store operations over the last decade or more, and focused on various aspects and issues involved in the transition.

Participating in the panel were Tejpal Ranka of Ranka Group, Shehzad Zaveri of Minawala, Sankar Sen of Senco, Aditya Pethe of Waman Hari Pethe and Vijay Jain of Orra. The session was moderated by Anil Prabhakar, an industry professional.

There was an interesting discussion among the retailers on issues like location, marketing, celeb endorsements, own manufacturing vs outsourcing, design, franchising, etc. with a wide variety of often divergent views being expressed.

How does one select a retail location? Both Zaveri and Pethe were of the opinion that there is a certain ‘gut feeling’ to the decision and it is not always based on detailed analysis of the demographics and other factors. However, they, and most of the other panellists, stressed that accessibility and visibility were two key issues that need to be addressed.

Ranka cited the example of a store they opened just off the Mumbai-Pune expressway and well outside Pune city limits. “The property was located in a place where a large number of residential projects to house the city’s burgeoning IT industry population were to come up, and the price was good. It also offered adequate parking,” he said. The store today has average footfalls of 600-700 per day with numbers rising on weekends and soaring on festive occasions.

Jain also opined that one must be flexible and close down a location that is not doing well. “We may have shut down about 10% of our stores over the years,” he said. 

Sen was of the view that celebrity endorsements can do a lot to boost a brand image and said that one has to choose ambassadors carefully. Senco itself has benefited in eastern India from having Bengali filmstar Prasenjit as its face, but his appeal in other parts of the country was limited. He said that the tie-up with the film Piku, which had stars like Amitabh Bachchan, Deepika Padukone and Irrfan Khan, who have all-India appeal was also beneficial.

Elaborating on the Orra experience, Jain said that the brand no longer had celebs as part of its Above the line activity, but did a number of local events and other BTL activities which had a high glamour quotient.

Zaveri, on the other hand has let his jewellery and designs do the communication, and says that he had many celeb clients who have been loyal over the years not only because they like his products, but because he has always respected their privacy and even ensured that the staff never attempt to take photos of the celebs in the store.

The retailers all agreed that with multi-store expansion it was necessary to go beyond family and draw in professional talent as well. Training, proper guidance and regular motivation were the key factors in ensuring that they ran stores as well as if they had been under direct control of the family. Pethe said that the older generation of the family had initially been hesitant to trust non-family persons, but after some time it became accepted by all.

Should one manufacture one’s own jewellery, or get it done by others to focus on retailing? Zaveri stressed the former, saying this was especially important in high end couture jewellery, but Jain felt that the primary focus of a retailer’s business should not be diluted by his getting involved in supervising manufacturing as well.

Responding to a question from the audience, all five of the panellists agreed that the decision of a business model – franchisee vs self-owned – was entirely dependent on the scale one wished to reach. Rapid scaling up of operations was only possible through a franchisee model.

Pethe had a word of advice for single store retailers – moving to multi-store was not the only path to success, he said. “You must identify the particular USP of your store and use it as a differentiator to move ahead of the competition.”