‘Odyssey’ embarks on expansion drive

Odyssey- the South-based book and entertainment retail chain, is expanding furiously. Against present 13 stores spread across six cities — Chennai, Hyderabad, Salem, Coimbatore, Tiruchi and Varanasi — it wants to at least have 20 new stores by March-end. It will be adding 65,000 sq ft in retail space to its existing 80,000 sq. ft., reports the Hindu Business Line.

Odyssey has partnered with Deccan Chronicle promoters Ravi Reddy and Ram in Hyderabad, and V Subramaniam, a silk trade entrepreneur, in Varanasi.

In the next two years, the retail chain plans to invest around Rs. 125 crore, add about five lakh sq ft in retail space, and have presence in 20 cities across the country, including Pune, Vizag, Mumbai, New Delhi and NCR, Chandigarh, Mangalore and Thiruvananthapuram.

Odyssey opened its first store in Bangalore yesterday with plans to add two more stores soon.

Flying Machine to change tack; sell from exclusive stores

Textiles major, Arvind which has a bouquet of home-grown brands include Excalibur, Flying Machine, Newport and Ruf N Tuf, is riding high this year on its lifestyle brand Excalibur. This repositioned brand is likely to deliver a growth of 40% in turnover, increasing to about Rs. 60 crore this year against Rs. 43 crore in the previous year.

Flying Machine, the first indigenous jeans brand of India introduced in 1997, which is sold through 200 multi-brand stores, is however languishing in sales at about Rs. 25 crore a year, is now being repositioned by the group, to ramp up sales. According to the new plan, Flying Machine jeans will now be sold through exclusive brand-dedicated stores from this year at a slightly pushed up price range of Rs 895-1495, which is Rs. 100 to Rs. 200 more than the present according to a DNA reports . Through revised strategy, Arvind envisages to pull up its sale of Flying Machine from Rs. 25 crore to about Rs 40-crore in the next fiscal.

Jeans’ market in India, estimated at Rs. 5,000 crore, is a highly crowded. There are plethora of brand and only 15% of this is accounted for by the organised sector, which includes brand leaders like Levis, Lee and Pepe, who each of whom sales around Rs 100 crore per annum.

Spare Railway land as ‘Equity’ ?

As reported earlier, Railways are looking at utilising their vast network, across the length and breadth of the country, to set up retail hubs for ago commodities in a tie up with major retailers like Reliance, Bharti, Tata and Biyani owned Future Group. According to a report in the Economic Times, the blue print for such an initiative is likely to be finalised within a fortnight.

These retail hubs would also include facilities for cold storage and warehouses on unutilised railway land, surrounding the railway lines and stations. The railways own around 44,000 hactares of utilisable land. While, the railways are not looking at entering into the real estate business, they are considering to offer their land holdings as equity in retail ventures of such retail players.

It may be recalled that only about a fortnight back the railways have finalised arrangements with 14 private parties like Cargill, Kribhco and RIL for owning and operating container train services. The second round for container train allotment is expected soon.

Both the allotment of containers and land for retail to private players will rake in big money for the railways.

‘Starbucks’ retail plans stuck in policy carridors

Retail plans of Starbucks, the Seattle based, biggest coffee shops chain in the world, which had reprtedly tied up with Pantaloon Retail, to set up a chain of retail outlets in India, have got stuck in policy carridors of the government of India for want of adequate information. It is not clear as to whether apart from coffee shops, Starbucks also wants to set up a chain of restaurants in India? said industry secretary Ajay Dua.

“We have sought more details on the nature of the business they want to do and the nature of arrangement they want to have. Once we have their response, and if we are satisfied, we will move the proposal to the Foreign Investment Promotion Board for clearance,” added Dua.

Currently, the government policy allows majority equity of up to 51% in single brand retail, although for past few weeks Commerce Minister is signaling the possibility of allowing majority stake in multi-brand retail where product basket does not affect small shop owners. The government is looking at attracting foreign retail investors by framing attractive policy guidelines for them as until now only nine single brand retail proposals have been approved by the government.

It may be interesting to recall that Bharti and the world’s biggest retailer Wal-Mart have circumvented the policy guidelines by deciding to set up a joint venture for back-end retail operations.