No Pharma Shops in a Mall

Till now I haven't seen any pharma retail shop in any Mall. To me it seems like a necessity in a mall. We have malls selling everything through there hypermarkets, department stores, food courts, speciality stores, cigarette kiosks, etc. But if a customer needs a crocine he is expected to go out, cross the road and take it from any nearby pharma shop, even if the customer is suffering from severe headache and outside the sun is shining too bright.

What? The basic medical facility is available at the Customer Service Desk of all the department stores and hypermarket. But how many customers know about that? The only thing they know is that there is no medicine shop available in the Mall.

Though Future Group has started with Tulsi (medicine shops) within their Big Bazaar store. But today I required citrizine which was neither available at the Customer Service Desk of my store, whereas Big Bazaar was not selling allopathy medicine today because of technical problems!!!

Dipstick Parameters

This is in continuation with the time to revise concepts.Today we will discuss formulae used to find how a particular store is performing.
The dipstick parameters can be used for finding the performance of four verticals that is customer transaction, stock, space and employees. The formulae are discussed as under.

1. Customer Transaction:

1.1 Customer Conversion Ratio = (Number of Bills Made/Customer entry)*100
1.2 Transactions Per Hour = (Number Of Transactions /Number of Hours)*100
1.3 Sales per Transaction or Ticket size = (Net Sales/ Number of Bills)

2. Stock

2.1 Average Selling Price = (Total Values of Good Sold/ Total Quantity Sold)

2.2 Stock Turnover or Inventory Turnover = (Net Sales/ Average Inventory)

OR

Stock Turnover or Inventory Turnover = (Cost of Goods Sold/ Average Inventory at Cost)

This depicts how many times the inventory rotates in a year.

2.3 Gross Margin Return on Inventory = (Gross Margin/ Average Inventory)

2.4 Shrinkage to net sales = (Actual inventory- Book Inventory/ Net Sales)* 100

2.5 Sales to Stock Ratio = (Net Sales/ Average Cost Inventory)

3. Space

3.1 Sales Per Square Feet = (Net Sales/ Square Feet of Selling Space)

3.2 Stocks Per Square Feet = (Net Stock/ Square Feet of Selling Space)

3.3 Percentage of Space for Department = (Space allocated to each department/ Total Selling Space)

*** See the sales per Square feet of the store and then calculate sales per square feet of each department. And Then compare how each department is performing relative to the store itself.

4. Employees

4.1 Net Sales Per Full Time Employee = (Net Sales/ Number of Full Time Employee)

4.2 Labour Productivity = (Total Labour Costs/ Net Sales)*100

Time to Revise Concepts

I will try and post some very basic concepts which we have learnt during our Retail Management. The first thing a customer does after entering the store is he looks at the merchandise. So today lets start with color blocking that is how merchandise should be color blocked so that it is most appealing to the eyes of customer.

1. On a wall we follow VIBGYOR (Violet, Indigo, Blue, Green, Yellow, Orange, Red) from left to right. This is in the order of colors emitted by light when it pass through a prism. We follow this as the natural light is always soothing to the eyes.

2. From top to bottom we follow dark to light or light to dark depending on the season that is summer or winter. Though our teacher taught us that we always follow dark to light from top to bottom because dark colors attract the customers from a distance. So in summers you can experiment with both the concepts and follow what pleases your eyes.







3. While hanging on a straight arm, waterfall or step arm we follow light in the front and dark color at the back.


So in three simple steps you can give a pleasent look to your section.

Checklist for Management Trainees of Hypermarket format

For the management trainees of hypermarket format the way to proceed will be bit different from the management trainees of Departmental stores. Hypermarket format much more SKUs compared to Departmental stores therefore trainees need to proceed merchandise category wise rather than brand wise.
The Checklist for the trainees of Hypermarket format is as under:
1. Printout of store layout.
2. Department wise area allocated.
3. Choose a department where you will like to start from.
4. Take a printout of all the merchandise category in that department.
5. Find out the price range offered in that category.
6. Find out the most sold price point in that category through team members of the department. Because in hypermarket format we work on price points rather than on brands.
7. Take the product knowlege.
8. Do an 80:20 analysis that is 20% of the merchandise category in the department will account for 80% of the sales for the section.
9. Look for the reasons why the rest 80% merchandise are not performing well. If that can be improved on.
10 Look for the contribution of the section in terms of sales, profits and area to the store. I believe this would give you the complete knowledge about that department.
11.Spend a day at cashering
12. Spend a day at Customer Service Desk.
13. One Day each with VM, HR and Marketing.
14. Then some days at Supply Chain Mangement: Here learn all the inward outward processes and all the commands on S.A.P. to do so. Learn the various commands on systems and how to generate Purchase order, Stock Transfer Order, etc.
15. Spend one day with IT/ Admin.
16. After this you can proceed with other departments of the store or whatever your project requires.
All The Best!!!!

This post is to reply to a comment on last post which said
"can you shed some light on :- why we need to take a print out of the store layout ?and what is brand matrix?"

We need to take out a print out of store layout because it will tell you which department is exactly located where in the store and in how much square feet, how wide are your aisles, etc.

For Brand Matrix let me post here brand matrix of a brand in Pantaloon say John Miller which is a private label.

Brand: John Miller
Target Age Group: 21 to 35 years
Median age: 27 years
Gender: Male
Current Brand Status: Power Brand
Perception: Value
Influences: Alto to Zen, travels by train to work
Character: Aspirational formal officewear/ officewear casuals at value
Central meme: Stepping Stone to Success

this brand matrix is defined by the company itself.

Checklist for Management trainees of Retail World

This post is for management trainees of the retail sector who go for their training in a store and find themselves lost, as their mentor or anyone is too busy to attend them.
This time I have been lucky enough to do my training under the guidance of a mentor who is always ready to help and to listen to anyone in the store.
So for the management trainees who enter in a department store, I am posting a checklist which they can follow to get themselves acquainted with the store and the operations of the store. this checklist is done with the help of my present mentor Mr. Rohit Singh, who has helped me to device a plan for my training.
1. Print out of Store Layout
2. Brandwise area allocated
3. Brand Matrix
4. Name of all Brands
5. Price Points of Each Brand (the price band)
6. Most selling Price Point in each brand
7. Top to bottom ratio for each brand: This is the topwear and bottomwear of a brand
8. Fixture capacity of brands
9. Contribution of brands to their departements and to the store.
10. Fabric awareness
11. Spend a day at cashering
12. Spend a day at Customer Service Desk.
13. One Day each with VM, HR and Marketing.
14. Then some days at Supply Chain Mangement: Here learn all the inward outward processes and all the commands on S.A.P. to do so. Learn the various commands on systems and how to generate Purchase order, Stock Transfer Order, etc.
15. spend one day with IT/ Admin.
16. And then on your Project, which you would have half covered by going through the above checklist.
I hope it would help you.....
All The Best!!!
In my next post I will try and post a checklist for the people doing their training in Hypermarket format.

Pharma Retail in India

Hi Friends,
I was recently reading about pharma retail scenario in India and was shocked to find out that out of 8,00,000 pharma shops in India, only one-third are present in rural India. This not only depicts a huge opportunity for retailers to capture but also the poor condition of rural India.Presently all the retail chains are focussing on urban areas, though Apollo pharmacies has tied up wid Godrej to set pharma retail shop, but still there is a long way to go.

Rural Retailing in India

I will like to start with my core area of interest that is rural retailing
Rural India accounts for roughly 70% of the population. Almost 6, 27,000 villages are home to 790 million Indians today.

At present 85% of the organized retailing takes place in India’s urban areas. But the good thing is that the retail focus has already shifted to the rural areas. The Indian rural market with its vast size and demand base offers great opportunities to marketers. Two-thirds of country’s consumers live in rural areas and almost half of the national income is generated here.

15% of rural population lives in 20,000 large “non urban” areas with population more than 5,000 people. 63% of rural population lives in villages of 1000 to 5000 people. Remaining 3, 90,000 villages have fewer than 1000 people accounting for 22% of the population.

For a retailer it is essential to see in which segment it is catering in the above division of villages. For example Shakti caters to villages with a population of 500 or above. Where in Eveready considers even the remotest of village as its target customer. It operates through more than thousand company-owned vans and has over 4,000 distributors to directly providing service to 6,00,000 retail outlets.

Objective of the blog........................

Hi Everyone,

I have started this blog wth a desire to share knowlege. As my mentor Ms. Garima Dhamija once said "Don't keep any knowledge to yourself, share whatever knowledge you have". So keeping this in mind at this platform I will try to share whatever little or more knowledge I have.