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Paco and Witco

V.P.Harris, Managing Director of Chennai-based speciality retailer Witco, sent me a note with some interesting takeaways and reactions to the recent presentation made by retail guru Paco Underhill in Bangalore.

Some Extracts:

Paco: Mirrors – For the younger generation the “mobile” is a fashion accessory and not just a communication device. They need mirrors to check out “the look”

Harris: At Witco, we have found even 40 + Maritian’s (Men) like to check out ‘’their look” with the new port folio in hand. So, mirrors are definitely not for clothing, footwear, cosmetics, jewellery alone.

Paco: Self-Service need not be for self-service stores alone. Almost any store can be designed for partial selfservice.

Harris: At Witco we have added shelf talkers, specs sheets, feature highlights, navigational aids – all in relatively small stores to address this. After all you cannot staff the store based on the needs of some 30 minutes a day when you may have customer’s out numbering the store team. So, this is an absolute necessessity for us!

Paco: How come Supermarket ailes are all of the same width? The very high traffic ones need to be wider.

A drug store increased sales by 18% by just handing over baskets to people who have more than two three items in hand.

Harris: Landmark book stores always do that for me! Many supermarkets, departmental stores do that here in India.
You can download the full article here

Arun Natarajan is the Founder & CEO of Venture Intelligence, the leading provider of information and networking services to the private equity and venture capital ecosystem in India. View free samples of Venture Intelligence newsletters and reports.

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