Reflections on the growth of a retail chain

23 March 2000

{Presented below are excerpts from an interview with B. S. Nagesh, chief executive officer of the Shoppers' Stop group of department stores. Click here for profile on B. S. Nagesh}

On his belief in the retail format
B S Nagesh was always fond of the retail side of marketing. Even back in business school, he did a summer project on consumer buying behaviour for a company, which, ironically, was to become his employer eight years later. This was Carona Limited, for whom he did this detailed report.

His love for retail always saw him in the forefront of the sales activity, wherever he worked. At Blow Plast, as a case in point, he stood behind the counter for various dealers and actually sold units when he could well have sat behind his desk and relaxed.

The belief that a supermarket or self-service department store would work came to him during his stint with Carona. Here, while trying to enhance the customer experience and make a substantial difference to the way in which people bought shoes, he found that people readily accepted the self-service format he introduced in many stores. He noticed a great change in the buying behaviour of the consumers and an increased propensity to purchase when they were allowed to touch and feel the products without the active intervention of sales attendants. He was convinced that supermarkets or departmental stores would work.

On his early days at Shoppers' Stop
It took only one meeting that lasted several hours for Nagesh to get convinced he had to join the Rahejas. His meeting with the head of the group, G. L. Raheja, convinced him about their interest in the project. Further, he was so impressed by the attitude of Mr. Raheja and the manner in which he treated him, he was sure this was a person genuinely worth working for. Having decided, he joined the group on 1 July 1991 as a general manager, with a specific agenda to launch a super-store in three months' time.

The early days of the project were a real grind. With no benchmarks to follow, he had to literally walk the aisles, so to say, of every 'so-called' department store in the country. Here he tried to see and personally understand what made consumers come to these stores. So concentrated was his study that even today, nearly eight years later, he can vividly remember the layout and floor-plan of every department store as it then existed. His early learning from these stores was that there was no one compelling reason why consumers would go through these stores, and that a majority of these stores were dependent on consumer durables, the sales of which were first to be hit in a recession.