Feb 15, 2006 05:58 PM
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(Updated Feb 15, 2006 05:58 PM)
The future of retailing lies in specialty malls where consumers will go to shop as they have a wide variety of choice under one roof. The advantage of these malls is the fact that the conversion rate at Gold Souk, Gurgaon, a specialty jewelry mall, is over 70% as compared to less than 10 per cent that is witnessed in regular malls. Conversion rate refers to the number of people actually going to a mall and successfully completing a transaction and coming out. Last Diwali, when the jewelry industry reported 20-30% drop in jewelry sale in general markets, Gold Souk saw growth of 60 per cent, crossing over Rupees One Crore a day. Following the demolitions of illegal commercial constructions in Delhi, the legalized and specialized malls like Gold Souk are receiving lot of demands. Especially, the Wedding Souk at Pitampura, Delhi, which incidentally is a DDA certified malls and has received over 70% bookings. After the grand success of the Gold Souk, Gurgaon, the Aerens Group has drawn up plans to launch specialty malls in 10 major metro cities, thereby establishing a pan India presence by 2007. The Wedding Souk, Delhi April, 2006, followed by Gold Souks and Wedding Souks at Ludhiana by Baisakhi (April) 2007, Kochi by Onam (August) 2007 and Jaipur by Diwali (October) 2007. These Specialty Souks would make available over 25 lakh sq. ft. of shopping space with an international ambience, revolutionizing the way consumers would be shopping for jewelry, weddings, festivals and other special occasions. Gold Souk and Wedding Souk are also planned at Amritsar, Chennai, Bangalore, Hyderabad, Mumbai, Ahmedabad and Kolkata, which will be operational by 2008. Very soon we will enter USA, UK, Canada, Thailand and UAE. Our Specialty Malls are being expanded to cover other niche area in the field of Building Souk, Health Souk, Sports Souk, Cyber Souk. Successful development of value based concepts such as Gold Souk and Wedding Souk as well as development of retail space in smaller cities and towns will drive organised retail into the next level of cities. The ‘retail boom’, 85% of which has so far been concentrated in the metros is beginning to percolate down to smaller cities and towns. The contribution of these tier-II cities to total organised retailing sales is expected to grow.
