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APROJECT REPORT ON

“TO STUDY THE PRIVATE LABELS AT WESTSIDE STORE”

“LAW GARDEN”“APPAREL SECTION”

Submitted By:Vipal Gandhi (B-11) Amit Gurav (B-14) Nidhi Jain (B-16)Hiral Panchal (B-32) Pradeep Prajapati (B-42) Jagruti Gamar(A-12)

Submitted to:Prof. Shahir Bhatt

Retailing II

SHRI JAIRAMBHAI PATEL INSTITUTE OF BUSINESS MANAGEMENT AND COMPUTER APPLICATIONS (NICM-MBA)

MBA Batch 2009-11 Retailing- II

Executive Summary

The enormous retail boom in India has given space to many companies who have mushroomed out to benefit from this retail boom, which is nothing but a structured format of the unorganized retail business which is being done in India from ages.

Many stores have come up with exquisite interiors, state of the art infrastructure and the best possible brands to the customer which has led to the growth of mall culture in India. The stores try and attract customers by providing them with such services and plethora of options in brands in different categories so that they can retail customers for long and make them loyal towards their retail stores.

The retail business is booming in India and there has been remarkable shift in the buying behavior of the people from traditional stores to these departmental stores. It becomes important for the marketers to understand these relationships for successful design and execution of retail strategies. It would also enable the researcher to understand the private labels at retail stores

Westside Private Label Report


INDEXSr. No. Title Page No.

1 Introduction 12 Origin & Growth of Private Label Industry in India 23 Current Status of Private Labels in India 34 Selection of category

Selection of a store 4

5 List all the private labels 56 Price range of Private Labels 67 Analysis: Do private labels fit with store brand 98 Justification: In the selected category are there huge variations in

price, quality 10

9 Analysis: promotion criteria 1110 Analysis the sales performance 1211 Analysis: efforts to sale private labels than national brands 1212 Analysis: visual merchandising 1313 The store layout 1414 The services offered 1415 Conclusion 1516 Media News 16

Westside Private Label Report


1. INTRODUCTION

Store brands or private label brands are brands owned, controlled, and sold exclusively by a retailer. Private label brands which were first introduced over 100 years ago in few product categories, had seen an impressive growth in past few decades. Private labels proliferated in a number of product categories and garnered major market share as retailers perceived numerous benefits by their introduction. Apart from providing higher retail margins in comparison to national brands, private labels added diversity to the product line in a retail category. Added benefits accrued to the retailer in terms of differentiating its offerings from competing retailers as well as having greater leverage with manufacturers of national brands. Research deals with the competition between private label brands and national label brands (also called manufacturers’ brands). This stream of research has endeavored to identify that how either private label brands or national brands could differentiate from each other. The common perception that a private label’s primary attraction was the substantial price discount relative to the national brands, at which they were sold. They emphasized the role of quality in the private label purchase decision.

What is a private label

A private label brand, often referred to as an in-house brand or store brand, is that which is owned by the retailers themselves.

Examples

Shoppers Stop : STOP, Kashish, LIFE, Vettorio Fratini, Elliza Donatein, and AcropolisWestside: Gia, 2F4U, NUON, WESTSPORT, RICHMOND.

Westside Private Label Report 1 | P a g e


2. ORIGIN AND GROWTH OF PRIVATE LABEL INDUSTRY IN INDIA

A decade ago the concept of private label brands in India never existed as Indian consumers were more dependent on mom and pop stores which were unorganized. Shoppers Stop was the first retailer in 1990's to get into private label branding with STOP brand with a range of branded women ethnic wear but not many companies got into the organized retail market, as years passed by many business houses and new first gen entrepreneurs started their ventures into the retail arena with Future Group, Trent, Infiniti Retail, The Mobile Store, Westside and Univercell making a mark in the Indian organized Retail industry and eventually they started their own private label brands which has now grown to 14% of the total organized retail market which does not include the private label brands of small mom and pop stores.

With the organized retail market to reach $51 billion in 2010 as per ASSOCHAM-KPMG Study, the private label brand is going to make it big; initially the private label was only targeted towards the non branded product range which included wheat flour, masalas and papads. Now the private label brands have grown out of proportion by entering into high technology electronic gadgets like mobiles by Univercell, The mobile store and into other electronic products by electronic retail major croma with an entire"handpicked by croma" product range.

With the growth of private label brands, National brands are losing grounds to these retailers who are not only low priced but are also on par with quality standards and for the retailers themselves who are able to get anywhere from 20-40% margin on the sales, whereas national brands pay only 12-20% margin for the sale. The second reason being the regional effect of taste and preferences in a country like India wherein retailer have been found to be having 30% products having local taste and preference and 70% which is found in an all India basis to cater the regional needs and wants. Effect of private label brands on national brands was best exemplified during the tussle between frito lays and Future group and later on frito lay's brand like lays got off-shelf and tasty treat private label brand of Future group took over and now is amongst the highest seller in the Future group retail outlets and have a considerable amount of market share in fried chips market and now the private label also extends to fruit juices, sauces, etc.

3. CURRENT STATUS OF PRIVATE LABELS IN INDIAThe credit to the growth story of private label brands does not include only the retail outlets but also the national brands. The earlier strategies of national brands have



themselves now eaten their own market. At the start of last decade Multinational companies like Hindustan Unilever Ltd, Procter and Gamble, Britannia and others started outsourcing their product manufacturing to third parties. Companies shared their formulas and technology updates with the third parties to manufacture products which were on par with the quality of products manufactured by the MNC's themselves only to keep them away from the manufacturing and human resource problems and give more attention towards the Research and Development of new products and expanding the product lines.Today, a decade later organized retail players Trent boasts of 90% sales through private labels, Reliance Retail having 80% of their sales and Pantaloons at 75% of their sales and plans of getting more private label brands and extending brands like Such by Future group to small retail outlets and extending the product line and getting into new product categories. It is an alarming signal for FMCG majors towards a situation like Walmart-Tide, where in Walmart stopped purchasing from P&G and got their own private label brands with similar capability and now have a progressive share in the detergent market.

4. SELECTION OF CATEGORY: APPARELS

We have selected apparels as our focus area of our project at Westside store.It includes clothes for:



Men Women Children

Formals Wear Traditional Wear Casual WearCasual Wear Formals WearSports Wear Casual WearParty Wear Sports Wear

Party Wear

SELECTION OF STORE: WEST SIDE: LAW GARDENReasons considered by Westside while selecting a Site-

1) Sales potential of camp area is very high due to urbanization.2) Access to site for pedestrians is very good due to good location of the store as many

good roads coming from various areas meet this law garden area and parking area is ample in the area.

3) Accessibility to pedestrians is also good as people passing by can navigate the store easily and visibility of store is also good due to its location on main road.

4) Synergy from other stores is very high as other major players like Pantaloons, Reebok, Central mall, Crossword, retail stores on C.G.Road etc. are there in vicinity that helps in cross shopping.

5) Leasing and occupancy terms- Occupancy rate is high in this camp area and hence Westside negotiation power decreases as real estate developer due to area’s high development.

Type of location- Westside is located in LAW GARDEN & C.G.road which is a Central Business District i.e. a traditional center for retailing and shopping in Ahmedabad city. It has high concentration of department stores and large offices

Geographical centre of the settlement High concentration of public buildings and offices Very big buildings to maximize land use of expensive real estate Major retail outlets It contains a region with the greatest land value Good transportation facilities High concentration of traffic Great concentration of pedestrians High employment rate

5. LIST OF ALL PRIVATE LABELS

Sr. No. Private Brand Name Category1. Givo Mens Wear

2. Nuon Mens Wear,



Womens Wear

3. Richmond Men’s Wear

4. Ascot Men’s Wear

5. Westside Men’s Wear, Women’s Wear, Children Wear

6. Westsport Men’s Wear, Women’s Wear, Children Wear

7. Gia Women’s Wear

8. Tweety Children Wear

9. Bwitch Women’s Wear

10. Urban angels Children Wear

11. Street Blues Children Wear

12. Bright Sparks Foot wear

6. THE PRICE RANGE FOR PRIVATE LABELS AND THE RANGE OF PRODUCTS.

(All price ranges are in rupees)

WOMEN:



1. Nuon. (Collegian girls)

Category Price RangeT-shirts 199 - 899Jeans 549 – 1699Tunic 699 - 1899

2. Formals (working women being sold under brand name “West side”Range “399 to 1099”

3. Gia (for women’s’ + size)

Category Price RangeT-shirts 350 - 1500Kurtas 699 – 999

Trousers 899 – 1699

4. Ethnic (traditional) being sold under brand name “West side”

Category Price RangeKurtas 349 – 1699Dress 1599 – 3699

Leggings 399 -899

5. Westsport

Category Price RangeT-Shirts 199-599Jeans 599 - 1199

KIDS:

1. Urban angel (girls)

Category Price RangeT-shirts 129 - 999Jeans 899 - 1000



Skirts 699 - 1899

2. Street wears (boys)

Category Price RangeT-shirts 129 - 999Jeans 899 - 1000

3. Girls rule (like it or not)

Category Price RangeT-shirts 129 - 999Jeans 899 – 1000Skirts 599-1599

MEN:

1. Richmond (office wear & party wear formal)

Category Price RangeShirts 499-1199

Trouser 999-1399



2. Ascot (premium brand for formals)

Category Price RangeShirts 1099 – 1899

Trouser 1299 - 2199

3. Nuon (collegian boys)


4. Westsport


7. ANALYSIS: DO PRIVATE LABELS FIT WITH STORE BRAND

a. A critical factor in West side’s success has been its strategy to attract shoppers & keep them in stores- the amount of time shoppers spend in a store is perhaps the single most important factor in determining how much they will buy. . In having understood the pulse of the customers in India, Westside has clearly established itself as a brand with an Indian heart.

b. West side had been successful in attracting customers mainly because of the branding of their private labels. The customer won’t understand whether it is a



private label or national brand. It’s only because they have positioned their own private labels in such a way that they seem to be national brand.

c. One of the observation in the store was that the fonts used by the brand name Westside and the private labels are almost the same, that also adds to the positioning.

d. All the private labels were given good space and section so as to disintegrate themselves from the other private labels with the help different name boards.

e. Earlier they had more than 25 private labels being marketed at Westside store, but at present they have replaced them with store name “Westside” & “Westsport”, so as to create a direct association with the brand equity of Westside and having the association of almost same names.

f. Hence, we can conclude that, yes the private labels fit the brand image of Westside.

8. JUSTIFICATION: IN THE SELECTED CATEGORY ARE THERE HUGE VARIATIONS IN PRICE, QUALITY

In reference to the price range mentioned earlier in the report, most of the private have a good and wide price range so as to cater maximum audience and than providing them with different qualities of a product.

For e.g. if we take NUON t-shirt With no print Rs. 229 With normal print Rs 299



With rubber print Rs. 399 With pure viscous cotton Rs. 499 With viscous cotton and normal print Rs. 599 With viscous cotton and rubber print Rs. 699

By this example we can conclude that there are variations in price as well as quality.

Also, if we compare the private labels in the store itself, and we take average of their prices, than they all lie in the range of 500-1200, which suits the Purchasing Power Parity of middle class to higher class segment.

9. ANALYSIS: PROMOTION CRITERIA

Westside does not promote their private labels outside the store.

But for the show which comes on MTV i.e. DESI ROCK, they kept NUON as the associate partner for that show. The reason behind it was they re-branded their earlier private label named “2 Fast 4 U (2F2U)” to NUON and to divert the attention of audiences from 2F2U to NUON, these campaign was carried on.

Inside the store, each product will be having its tag of their private label and also the Westside tag, so as to create the direct association with the umbrella brand.



Each private label has been given different sections, spaces, racks, and a big mast-head type of banner so as to guide the customer about its location inside the store.

This banner also creates the branding for the private label.

For e.g. The space allotted to SPYKAR is as same as NUON, which creates that positive image in the minds of customer that they both are of same quality as well as brand equity.

Mannequins are placed at various places to attract customers.

In the route of store layout, they are placed before the national brands so the customers get influence by the private labels first.

10. ANALYSIS THE SALES PERFORMANCE

- We could not get the actual data but as per media data, they have 90 percent private labels in their store which generates 80 percent of their annual revenue.

11. ANALYSIS: EFFORTS TO SALE PRIVATE LABELS THAN NATIONAL BRANDS



They give equal spaces to all private labels so as to create equlity in the minds of customers

The price tag will be having the private label name.

Banners of each private label are present in the store.

Memberships are promoted and more discounts are given on private labels than national brands.

Members are given special discounts on private labels.

Vouchers are given to members, which can be redeemed only on private labels.

12. ANALYSIS: VISUAL MERCHANDISING

1. Colors & texturesIn west side they have used coffee and crème colour on the wall.

2. Fixtures and merchandise presentationIn this west side has straight forward presentation of the goods.

3. LightingIn west side we have seen there is proper lighting. Lighting which is in whitish-yellow shade. And we have observed consumer does not find any difficulties regarding the lighting.



4. MannequinsWe have found at west side every new items they have properly arranged on the mannequins in every sections mannequins are there like in gents wear, ladies wear and children wear.

Methods of Display1. Colour Dominance2. Co-ordinated presentation3. Presentation by priceIn west side we have seen they follow all these 3 methods for displaying the goods.Merchandise also displayed at west side on shelves and on hanger.

13. THE STORE LAYOUT

The store is divided into two floors 1. Ladies 2. Gents

On both the floors the private labels arre arranged before the national brands so as to promote the private labels.

14. SERVICES OFFERED

For the private labels special discounts are there on private labels for members.

For normal customers also there are more discounts on private labels.



15. CONCLUSION

A critical factor in Westside’s success has been its strategy to attract shoppers & keep them in stores- the amount of time shoppers spend in a store is perhaps the single most important factor in determining how much they will buy. . In having understood the pulse of the customers in India, Westside has clearly established itself as a brand with an Indian heart.

Over the years Westside has also developed and successfully introduced a range of new brands especially suited to the Indian palate. These brands like NUON, westsport have been a tremendous success amongst the new generation. What has also given Westside a competitive edge is that in addition to an extensive range of internationally renowned brands like Spykar, Lee and Fast Track they also offer the option of a less known brands for low budget customers.



Westside has been able to create a brand image and is consistently maintaining its brand identity by new additions in products and catering to the market need.

They are catering to different age groups under one roof. For ex. On the 2nd floor which is men’s section both formal and college wear is available. This way they are able to build a huge customer loyal base.

The in-store experience in Westside is very delightful. Their fully skilled and trained staff caters to the needs of the public in the right way. They don’t pounce upon the customer as soon as he enters the store. They wait till the time a customer starts selecting and then they come and help. This way the customer gets acclimatize with the store and the environment.

16. NEWS REPORT:

Westside wins 'The Most Admired Private Label Fashion Retailer of the Year’ at the Images Fashion Awards 2010

Mumbai: Westside was awarded the 'The Most Admired Private Label Fashion Retailer of the Year’ at the Images Fashion Awards 2010, the feted fashion event of the year organised by IMAGES Group. The awards ceremony was the culminating event of the India Fashion Forum 2010 (IFF) held on January 29,

2010 at The Renaissance, Powai. Westside has 90 per cent of its merchandise as private label brands and witnessed a growth of nearly 28 per cent in the retail space last year, despite the downturn.

On receiving the awards, Smeeta Neogi, head, marketing, Westside, said, “We are extremely happy and delighted to receive this appreciation as it reaffirms our belief towards the importance of customer engagement at every stage of merchandise development. This award serves as a great boost to our endeavour in understanding our customer requirements and delivering the best in fashion from India and international markets.”

The Images Retail Awards followed strict international benchmarks in deciding the top honours with IRIS Retail Intelligence as knowledge partner and global consulting firm AT



Kearney as the process approver. The selection process involved self-nominations as well as a countrywide poll to shortlist the nominees.


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