It’s the fashion!

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: Taste the World’, says the line below the Spencer’s brand display, may be justifiably so, because fresh and packaged food (46 varieties of cheese alone) continues to bring in the biggest chunk of revenues for the RP Goenka-controlled retail major. Ready-to-wear, or fashion as ‘food-first’ Spencer’s prefers to call it, accounted for just 10% of the Rs 1,000-crore or so in sales that the chain reported in 2007-08.

As Samar Singh Sheikhawat, vice-president for marketing at Spencer’s, claims, the RPG outfit is already the largest in terms of area under food, and also the No 1 in terms of large format food and grocery stores. Perhaps that is why Spencer’s wants to drive its garments business to the top slot.

Over the next couple of years, Spencer’s plans to increase the share of ‘fashion’ to 25% even as it gives space to major domestic brands and develops its own clutch of private labels for the entire segment.

Cut to Kishore Biyani’s Big Bazaar, the Pantaloons Retail (India) Ltd format that is the market leader, having begun with apparel and general merchandise when the first outlet opened in May 2001 in Kolkata. The Food Bazaar brand came later and soon over took apparel in terms of sales volumes.

In May this year, Big Bazaar launched Fashion at Big Bazaar as a sub brand to energise what is the cash cow of the whole business. Fashion accounts for 30% of total turnover today at Big Bazaar, which is part of a group with total turnover of Rs 3,700 crore for its year to June 30, 2007.

For Big Bazaar, fashion has nothing to do with high prices or the catwalk. Fashion is an image sought by consumers; so a person buying a shirt for Rs 199 is also looking for fashion. Rajan Malhotra, CEO, Big Bazaar, points out that Big Bazaar began with apparel and general merchandise, with Food Bazaar coming later. At present, fashion accounts for around 30% of turnover, with 37% coming from food and the rest from general merchandise, electronics and so on.