"We don’t operate on the price parameter"

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At a time when discount retailing is the latest buzzword in the organised sector, Spencer’s has dared to not play up the price point in a price conscious country. Rather the 100-year-old British brand, which was acquired by the $3.4 billion RPG Group in the 1980s, swears by the quality of its range and shopping experience in its stores. Operating 27 big retail formats, Spencer’s count of small stores is 373 under various names like Spencer’s Express, Daily, Fresh depending upon the size and location. Headquartered in Kolkata, the Spencer’s brand also has a specialty books, music and mobile store. The company plans to invest Rs 2,500 crore to ramp up its total number of stores by 2010. Having given India its first hypermart in 2000, the company pioneered quite a few other concepts as well, such as running a live bakery and kitchen section at its stores. In a tete ’a tete with FE’s Surabhi Agarwal, Samar Singh Sheikhawat, vice-president, marketing, Spencer’s Retail, talks about the company’s future plans, the challenges from the supply side and the protests from the unorganised sector. Excerpts:

What are the different formats that you have?

We have small, medium and large format, food and grocery retail stores. Besides, we also run a non-food arm—which is lifestyle. Under Spencer’s we also have books and music business. Music has been hived off as a separate business called Music World. The books business—Books and Beyond—is also new, under which we have a couple of stores. Our latest foray into retail, RPG Cellucom is through a joint venture (JV) with Cellucom from Dubai, under which we retail mobile handsets, accessories and other electronic gadgets.

But, the largest part of business and the fastest growing is Spencer’s retail. Our large stores are called Spencer’s Hyper and these are 25,000 sq feet and over. The smaller ones, called Spencer’s are 2000-12,000 sq feet and are essentially neighbourhood. To date, we have about 373 small and 27 large formats. But, the number is changing everyday. We are launching about 30-40 stores a month.

What is growing faster—small or big format stores?

You’d be surprised to know, the big. That’s why, this year we are planning to take their number to 75 (from the present 27) and also double small formats (from 373 to 600).

Where are these stores located?