In conversation with Shreyans Surana, Director, Style Baazar to know the insights of the business.
If you had to pen down your top 3 learnings from 2021, then what would that be?
Reinvent – Introspection on personnel cost, rental & marketing to built up cost effectiveness and cost reduction..
Reboot – Technology upgradation and automation (WMS/ARS/Vendor portal) for better stock management.
Rebound –Adapting to the changing dynamic scenario due to pandemic calls taken by local authority/state/central govt. Cost remodeling, exploring new markets, new market base for better EBITDA.
From your brand’s perspective, what changes did you bring in internally to build a ‘road to recovery’ last year?
Operational efficiency:
- Various sales improvements initiatives like:
- Project Laxmi – Incentives to sales staff to promote sales
- Project Subharambh – Opening the doors to new market
- Project Kuber – Cashier driven TSO drive
- Har bill Bin Product- Impulse product sale drive
- Cost remodeling though various cost reduction and improvements
- Development of e-commerce portal
- Association with other e-commerce players like amazon etc.
- Private Label Portfolio – Building private labels for our own brand establishment & market share for driving high margin with better assortment & availability.
- Consolidation of infrastructure – Shifting of multiple warehouses to single warehouse to reduce cost and improve efficiency.
What is your vision for 2022 for your brand?
- Topline drive:
- Better shopping experience
- Better Visual Merchandising
- Upgradation of fixtures
- Winning customers
- To be part of every occasion in customers life
- Marriage product activation
- Owning Customer
- Small town community connect
- Introduction of happiness card
- Assortment planning – Each store is unique
- Private Label contribution to reach 40 per cent of the total sales mix.
- Listing of company for IPO by going public.
- Upgradation of technology & automation for better inventory management and reduction of lead time.
How are you laying the bricks for growth and success in the New Year? Is it going to be an omnichannel journey or putting action to digital transformation or accelerating processes with technology or something else? Tell us your thoughts.
It will be combination of all 3 measures as mentioned above. We will be taking the Omnichannel route. We are already upgrading processes vide digital transformation across various functions via tools /SaaS support Cost remodeling has made us lean and faster. To focus on private labels leading to better customer connect and differentiation.
How much has the company grown under your leadership in the pandemic period?
In terms of sales the recovery was 76 per cent wrt FY19-20 in the month of Jul’21 & Aug’21 while it was 94 per cent during Sep’21 & Oct’21. In terms of footfalls, the recovery was 61 per cent wrt FY20 in the month of Jul’21 & Aug’21 while it was 74 per cent during September 21 & October 21. The conversion ration has improved from 49 per cent in FY20 to 56 per cent in FY21 & YTD Oct-21.
Further to this we had opened 9 new stores during FY 20-21 and 13 stores till YTD Dec-21.
