Shoppers won't stop

It’s one of the earliest players in Indian organised retail. The first Shoppers’ Stop opened in 1991 and B.S. Nagesh, Managing Director & Customer Care Associate, isn’t in a mood to let all that experience just slip away.

“We have been in the business for 17 years but we cannot get older when our customers are getting younger. We want to get trendier without losing the experience,” says Nagesh.

That’s one reason for the K. Raheja Group-owned company opting for a Rs 20-crore rebranding exercise; this includes an identity change, with a fresh logo and a tag line that says: ‘Start something new’. Shoppers’ Stop is expected to spend Rs 500 crore on expansions.

This includes taking the number of stores from 24 to 41 over 3-5 years. “We will expand from 1.5 million sq. ft to 3.3 million sq. ft space by 2011.

Rs 500 crore should come through a rights issue,” reveals Nagesh. The company also has a Hyper City, spread over 120,000 sq. ft, and is expected to expand this format to more than 25 stores in 36 months. That will help Shoppers’ gather some much-needed scale.