Bharti Retail Works to Consolidate Stores in North India
Bharti Retail aims to consolidate presence in northern India [Economic Times]
Bharti Retail, a recent entrant in the organised retail market, on Tuesday said before launching pan-India operations, it will focus on Punjab and then move on to consolidate its position in northern India.
“Our focus right now is Punjab and we will first consolidate our presence in North India,” Bharti Retail President and CEO Vinod Sawhney told reporters on the sidelines of a CII organised retail conference.
The company has recently announced the launched of its first three food and grocery stores under the brand name ‘Easy Days’ in Ludhiana, Punjab.
Easy Day is a neighbourhood format store, which has been launched first. The company also plans to have bigger formats like compact medium and hypermarkets.
Asked when the other formats were expected to be rolled out, Sawhney said, the company was at present learning from the experiences of the new stores and was thus concentrating on smaller formats.
Easy Day stores offer a wide range of products ranging from items for daily usage such as personal care products to groceries such as processed foods, staples, bakery, dairy products, meat and poultry.
Sawhney said the company would also focus on private labels at the stores. “As somebody who is entering the retail market we will be looking at private labels also,” he said.
The company, which has a JV with Wal-Mart for cash-and- carry operations and a franchisee agreement for front-end retail, aims to spend USD 2.5 billion by 2015 for opening multiple format stores.
The company is expected to open its first cash-and-carry stores by the end of 2008.
Posted by Vasudha Desikan on Thursday, May 15 | 0 comments | Permalink
Wal-Mart’s 2008 Shareholder Resolutions: Human Rights Committee
This is the third in a series of posts on Wal-Mart’s 2008 shareholder resolutions. The full list of resolutions - and Wal-Mart’s statements regarding them - can be found in the company’s 2008 proxy here (PDF).
Resolution #7 on this year’s proxy proposes the establishment of a human rights committee at Wal-Mart. Below, the details of the proposition, why Wal-Mart’s shareholders would benefit and how the company has reacted to the proposal.
Wal-Mart’s Public Image Problem
Reports of human rights violations have dogged Wal-Mart for years - particularly in the company’s supplier factories, most of which are overseas. These violations have thoroughly damaged Wal-Mart’s reputation, with everyone from U.S Senators to Wal-Mart employees to factory workers themselves speaking out about the inhumane conditions in Wal-Mart’s supplier factories. Bama Athreya, director of the International Labor Rights Forum, testified before Congress on the issue of toy safety, explaining that “Wal-Mart bears a lion share of responsibility for pushing the toy industry to a place where worker health and safety are basically nonexistent.”
Wal-Mart also holds the ignominious title of being the only company investigated by Human Rights Watch for its domestic labor practices. The group’s 2007 report labeled Wal-Mart’s union-busting policies a violation of basic human rights, saying:
It pursues its anti-union agenda relentlessly, often from the day a new worker is hired, devoting considerable time and resources at all levels of the company to the anti-union drumbeat.
The constant stream of allegations have damaged Wal-Mart’s reputation and in turn, its profits. In 2007, a Bank of America analyst’ report found that Wal-Mart’s profits had suffered as a result of organized labor’s opposition to the company and its unethical labor practices. The report noted that the union’s campaign “has cost WMT [Wal-Mart] real estate sites in key locations, adversely impacted comp store sales to some degree, and has distracted m management from focusing on its retail strategy. Additionally, Lee Scott now spends a large amount of time improving WMT’s image domestically and abroad, and WMT has been forced to focus advertising dollars on defending their brand.”
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Posted by Research Team on Tuesday, May 13 | 3 comments | Permalink
Wal-Mart Continues to Focus on Expansion Abroad
In this article from the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette, author Steve Painter makes the important correlation between Wal-Mart’s increasing international expansion and the company’s difficulty expanding in the U.S. Just last week the company lost a 2-year-long site fight on the south side of Chicago, a crucial city in the company’s urban expansion plans. Wal-Mart has met opposition to its international plans as well, including protests in India which have stymied the company’s plans there. Were all international markets aware of Wal-Mart’s business practices, we’re pretty sure the company’s expansion efforts abroad wouldn’t be going so well.
Foreign markets fertile for Wal-Mart [Arkansas Democrat-Gazette]
In Brazil, Wal-Mart Stores Inc. is counting on its small format Todo Dia neighborhood grocery stores to drive sales among low-income customers.
In Canada, Wal-Mart continues to add supercenters to its traditional base of discount stores, gaining market share.
In India, Wal-Mart partner Bharti Enterprises recently opened the first of its new Easy Day stores in a nation teeming with potential customers.
Deploying formats ranging from convenience store-sized markets to U.S.-sized supercenters, the world’s largest retailer is expanding its international operations at several times the rate of its stores in the United States, where it scaled back growth last year.
As Wal-Mart increasingly encounters opposition to its stores in U.S. cities it has yet to penetrate, it has mostly found open doors overseas, especially in developing economies where incomes are rising. In the past year, Wal-Mart’s international selling space grew 18 percent while U.S. space was up 4.6 percent.
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Posted by Alex Goldschmidt on Monday, May 12 | 53 comments | Permalink
Bharti Afraid to be Seen in Public with Wal-Mart
As Wal-Mart’s entry into India draws closer, rumors are surfacing that Bharti’s stores might not bear the Wal-Mart name after all. A technicality? Or a move by Bharti to avoid Wal-Mart’s bad reputation?
Bharti Retail could drop Wal-Mart tag [Financial Express]
New Delhi, Feb 20 The Wal-Mart brand may not come to India anytime soon. Bharti Retail, with which the US retail giant has tied up for its India entry, may not use the Walmart name for its front-end retail stores. Mike T Duke, vice chairman, Wal-Mart Stores Inc, dropped enough hints about it when he said: “three-fourths of our international business earnings are under 52 local brands across the globe. We want to be seen as local retailers serving the needs of the local people in an area.”
However, Rajan Bharti Mittal, managing director, Bharti Enterprises, said the final rollout plans of the retail and cash and carry stores would be made in April, and brand names for the retail and cash and carry stores would be announced then. Mittal did not confirm whether the stores would sport the Wal-Mart name.
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Posted by Alex Goldschmidt on Thursday, February 21 | 11 comments | Permalink
Friday Blog Round-Up: Happy Valentine’s Edition
GAWKER/EDELMAN SMACKDOWN
First of all, we’d like to thank the fairy godmother who inspired Gawker’s bloggers to give birth to this headline.
Edelman Is A Soulless, Wal-Mart Shilling Firm That Shouldn’t Lecture About Ethics [Gawker]
You and your agency aren’t really the paragons of honesty and decency in communications that you present yourselves to be. You guys have run a political-style, multimillion-dollar campaign for years on behalf of Wal-Mart, one of the most objectionable companies in the world.
Paid liars. [The Writing on the Wal]
Reporters may understand that they’re going to be lied to on a regular basis, but do the people that shop there? If they do, why does Wal-Mart waste millions of dollars each year on Edelman? After all, they could always lie to the public just as easily and just as often for free.
Blog Wars: Gawker vs. Edelman [Adages]
It all started after Mr. Edelman personally responded to a post Mr. Nolan wrote that featured a marketing executive’s detailed account about a media training session he or she had with an Edelman employee wherein the Edelman employee flat out told the exec that: “Sometimes, you just have to stand up there and lie.”
Mr. Edelman demanded that the post be taken down immediately. Ummm ... fat chance of that happening.
The fact that Edelmen just launched a “transparency in communications” initiative: sadly ironic or poetic justice?
After the jump, Wal-Mart fights to stay afloat in Japan, and the company gets a very special valentine from citizens in California.
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Posted by Alex Goldschmidt on Friday, February 15 | 7 comments | Permalink
India on Wal-Mart’s Sourcing Practices
As Wal-Mart ramps up to enter the Indian market, academics and analysts in India are taking a fresh look at Wal-Mart’s expansion practices. This piece from India’s Financial Express explores Wal-Mart’s sourcing practices and dependence on China for production. Wal-Mart has met harsh resistance in India, and as the discussion around Wal-Mart expands, more debate is sure to follow.
Wal-Mart increases its hold on China [Financial Express (India)]
China is the largest exporter to the US in virtually all consumer goods category and Wal-Mart is the leading retailer of consumer goods in the US. So uncanny and strong is the mutual dependency between China and Wal-Mart that they have been called as the “ultimate joint venture” by some. Wal-Mart’s dramatic rise in overseas production and sourcing was a result of landmark changes in public and global trade policies supported by bipartisan consensus for the last 25 years.
Wal-Mart has reached such levels of sophistication in its international sourcing that it is always one step ahead of its competitor in either new product development or sourcing the same product for a nickel less and thereby doing justice to its motto of “everyday low prices”. The impact of the rise of Wal-Mart on other US-based retailers and manufacturers bears striking resemblance to the impact of the rise of China as a manufacturing force on other Asian manufacturing-exporting countries.
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Posted by Alex Goldschmidt on Wednesday, February 06 | 9 comments | Permalink
Store Designer Rodney Fitch on Retail in India
‘Retailing in India to grow faster than in US’ [Rediff News]
Fitch, one of the largest design consultancies in the world that has designed stores of Wal-Mart, Target, Marks & Spencer, Best Buy and Tesco among others, is betting big on India’s organised retail sector. Already in the country to serve clients such as Aditya Birla Retail, Reliance Retail, Tatas and so on, Fitch plans to treble the number of staff and open new offices in the country. Founder and Chairman Rodney Fitch speaks about the opportunities the country’s retail segment offers to design companies such as Fitch.
How do you look at opportunities in India’s organised retail sector?
I will describe it in three words—wonderful, exciting and challenging. In India, there is very strong visual culture, but there isn’t enough design resources at present. That is why firms such as Fitch, Portland, Landor and Brand Union are here to serve the retailers. Hypermarkets, supermarkets, online retailing, small stores, everything will happen in the country at a much faster pace than they happened in the US and Europe. They will also co-exist.
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Posted by Alex Goldschmidt on Monday, January 14 | 0 comments | Permalink
Friday Blog Round-Up: New Year, New Plan Edition
ATTENTION WAL-MART CUSTOMERS
There’s been a lot of talk about the porn-filled mp3 players parents have been purchasing around the country. Consumerist brings us a story of another sabotaged mp3 player - this one with a different message:
The iPod purchased from a Maryland Walmart contained a note written in ransom-letter caps reading:
RECLAIM YOUR MIND FROM THE MEDIA SHACKLES. READ A BOOK AND RESURRECT YOURSELF.
TO CLAIM YOUR CAPITALISTIC GARBAGE GO TO YOUR NEAREST APPLE STORE.
Further proof of an employee revolt-in-the-making?
After the jump, freeing Wal-Mart, Working Families, rallies in India, and all the ways that Wal-Mart saves you money.
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Posted by Alex Goldschmidt on Friday, January 04 | 78 comments | Permalink
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