Open & Shut Case 3

 

What is the Solution ?

at first ! What is the problem?  

The profitability of the business or even a mere existence (sustainability) is difficult for small neighbor hood shops. 

That is why 

 Open with Hope & Shut with Despair.

happens

This situation is due to various external factors some of them being,

On line Shopping

Chain of Stores opening shops in every neighborhood (while these stores before were only in rich class area)

Big Retail Giants opening showrooms in neighborhood(while these showrooms before were only in Business locality)

Multinational Brands coming to neighbor hood

Real Estate cost

Etc ...

While there could be many other such factors as well, so there could be many ways to tackle the situation as well.

But  let us analyze it from the following points,

If a new shop is opened were they able to inform the customer about this development.

Are the existing small shops visible to customers (as like earlier).

If they are visible are they able to attract and retain customers.

If there are customers coming are they able to convert them into loyal customers.

The above points if taken care of will at least solve the existence crisis of  small shops,

This points to acquiring  retaining and growing the customers.

 While the present day neighbor hood shopping space invaders have big marketing budget, the local vendors cannot afford it, still have to find a way to reach the customers. That is where the local advertising opportunity comes to help. One such opportunity is Carnatic Music Concerts Platform

We will see how to utilize this platform in our next blogs

Namaskaram

V Rajagopalan

Open & Shut Case 2

 

The new vendors found it difficult to establish themselves so they kept on changing their place of business, for example from a extn street they will shift to main road or vise versa, Thus they tried to keep their business going on and of course they managed it to a certain extent. So these shops functioned in one area but from different address, at different point of time.

Then the neighbor hood was transformed by arrival of Flats(apartment) culture this brought a huge difference in the way the neighbor hood bazar functioned. Super market /Chain of Supper market came into existence and then the Shopping Mall culture creeped in. These establishments advertised themselves thru newspapers and Television channels because they are available across many areas and also in some cases in various cities. Thus they could keep the business running.

Till this time the shops that were established in  a neighbor hood functioned from that area for quite a good period of time.

Due to online shopping and the advent of multinationals in daily commodity business and big companies setting shops in neighbor hood, also due to real estate cost, these single area neighbor hood vendors could not sustain in their business in the area of their establishment.

Thus the situation today in many neighbor hood is the small shops and establishment vendors will open shop today and will close very soon because they could not survive profitably.

Thus if you visit a neighbor hood today and see a shop and if you go there after three or four months the chance are very high that the shop might have shut doors. 

Open and Shut Case.

What is the solution let us see in our next blog

Namaskaram

V Rajagopalan

Open & Shut Case 1

 

For the past 20 are so years I have been observing my neighbor hood Retail Shops & Establishment. Also whenever I get an opportunity to visit other areas in  my city Chennai and also other towns if I am familiar with that place and if I visit those places often  I make it a point to watch out for the Shops and Establishment trends in that area. 

The Trend I see

20 years before, the neighbor hood was occupied by shops which are there almost since the early stages of that areas formation, the available space for shops and establishments were also limited. The requirement of the customers were are also of  regular commodities. The customer were all regular customers the shop keepers, mostly the owners, had personal equation with almost all the customers. The business was predictable, no surprises, the customers were loyal, most of them had credit facility with the shops. 

Point to be noted here is these shops and establishment took part in all the neighborhood celebrations in fact they volunteered to organize, sponsor and extended all kinds of support for these activities. This gesture in turn helped these shops & establishment to earn the loyalty of the customers. Some time the customers even willing to pay some premium for the product and services for the sake of emotional connect.

As times rolled by the extent of neighbor hood expanded and and there was seamless merger of many neighbor hoods because of dwelling units coming in between two distinct areas. This gave access to more than one vendor in the vicinity for the customers. Though the loyalty was in decline this was compensated by increase in the number of customers. The business started to be little bit unpredictable. As more and more dwelling units came up very close together the requirement of more than basic needs increased so new type of shops and establishments came in to existence and by now the landscape of the bazar has totally changed. 

The old shops & establishments continued to do business in spite of competition with support from loyal customers. Due to less profit earning because of competition and also due to escalating cost of the events the old establishments showed diminished interests in the events. This was taken advantage by the new vendors and they started supporting these events  but due to availability of more vendors the visibility and connect with customers for these new vendors was very much less compared to the old establishment.

Namaskaram

V Rajagopalan