Boston Days - Part 8

The Man Who Saved Best Buy Walked Into My Classroom Today.

(I am writing “Boston Days” as a series of articles for quick reference for myself and other retail pilgrims. This article covers “Culture as Strategy — a Leadership Class with Hubert Joly”)

There is a specific kind of pause that happens inside you when you register, fully and without warning, who exactly is standing at the front of the room.

It happened to me this morning at HBS.

The professor for today’s session was Hubert Joly. Former chairman and CEO of Best Buy. 

The man who walked into arguably the most distressed large-format retail situation in modern American business — stock at $11, market cap at $4 billion, Amazon at its most predatory — and rebuilt it by asking one question almost no CEO was asking at the time: what is this company actually for?

I have spent three decades watching Indian retail. One hundred plus cities. Every format from airport terminal to neighbourhood kirana. 

And yet, sitting in that classroom this morning, I had to consciously remind myself to take notes rather than simply listen.

The session was built around two cases. Nvidia. Walmart.

The Nvidia case was not primarily a technology story. At its core, it was a study in Jensen Huang’s deeply personal leadership style — his instinct for flat structures, radical transparency, and a culture where the fear of embarrassment is replaced entirely by the fear of missing a consequential idea. 

Every person in the room left understanding that Nvidia’s extraordinary run cannot be separated from who Huang is as a human being, and how that humanity travels through fifty thousand people. Strategy, in his hands, is inseparable from character.

The Walmart case landed differently, and with equal force. The discussion centred on Doug McMillon’s fundamental conviction that Walmart’s greatest long-term competitive asset is not its logistics network or its store footprint — it is its people. 

His big bets on workforce investment, wage floors, training and dignity are not HR policy. 

They are strategic bets made with the same rigour a CFO applies to capital allocation. McMillon has simply decided that people are the capital.

The thread connecting both cases — and the man teaching them — was impossible to miss.

Culture is not a consequence of strategy. It is the strategy.

What I carried out of that room was not a framework. It was a reckoning.

Thirty years in retail. Thousands of hours on floors and in boardrooms. Have I always been as deliberate about culture as I have been about category, format and footfall?

The man who walked into Best Buy in 2012 — when people around him said he was either crazy or suicidal — did not walk in with a better product or a superior balance sheet. 

He walked in with a clearer answer to that question than anyone else in the building.

As it turns out, that is not a small thing.

It is everything.

(I am writing “Boston Days” as a series of articles for quick reference for myself and other retail pilgrims.)

Read Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, Part 4, Part 5, Part 6, Part 7, Part 8 and Part 9 here.

Reliance wins handsdown

The first store for Reliance came up in Hyderabad. It was a grocery retail format and many skeptics wrote off the idea, citing intense competition in this segment. Gross Margins are low, two-digits and net margins, if any are a mere 4-6%. So, how would the company ever make money? Further, there were already established players in this segment, especially in the South (of India) such as Foodworld, Spencers, Food Bazaar, Nilgiris, FabMall, Trinetra (now together More), Fresh @ from Heritage Foods – the list could go on! But patience and perseverance has helped the company in the long term. According to a report in the most respected Hindustan Times newspaper, the company would become the largest Retailer in India by Sales in 2013-2014. The company is expected to close the year with $2 Billion in Sales, approx. INR 12,000 Crores. And it made a meagre INR 78 Crores last year and has made INR 278 Crores in 2013-14. That’s not bad at all. The company has been able to achieve scale over the past 7 years and its many Chief Executives of respective businesses have built the business brick by brick, sweating and toiling between Board Rooms and Store fronts.

Take a quick look at how the numbers stack up;

It’s a commendable achievement for Reliance Retail to achieve this position. Those who know me well would now agree what I have been saying ever since Reliance joined the fray in the Retail sector. I predicted right in the beginning that they are here for the long term. With a cash pile of INR 90,000 Crores and managing the largest Oil refinery in the world, Reliance has real deep pockets. And its Chairman Mukesh Ambani is not someone to open and shut businesses. Its not in their blood. Dirubhai Ambani, the patron founder of the group tht every household in India should have a Reliance product in some form or the other. The group created a furore in 2002 when the Reliance Mobile network was launched with an exciting Rs. 501/- package making it the most affordable mobile phone of its times. Similarly, they forayed into various other businesses and turned around all of them, albeit patiently.

One of the biggest reasons why Reliance has been able to reach where they are is also because of steadfast focus in the formats that they have opened and operated. They just have one Hypermarket, One Digital Electronics Format, three formats in Fashion, one in Jewelry and half a dozen international brand tie-ups. Makes it easy to focus on scaling up each vertical constantly. Reliance operates small supermarkets which compete with Kiran Stores and other organized players such as Spencers, Foodworld, Food Bazaar, etc. Reliance hyper directly competes with Metro AG, Best Price (Bharti Retail), Hypercity (K Raheja Group), Total (Jubilant  Retail), Big Bazaar (Future Group) nd other local wholesale markets and APMC operated mandis. In the fashion segment, Reliance Trends is positioned against Lifestyle (Dubai based Landmark Group), Shoppers Stop (India’s largest Department store Chain) and Pantaloon (now owned by Aditya Birla Group). Reliance Footprints has a unique positioning and doesn’t have major names for competition except Metro and Mochi who have a pan-India presence. Reliance Jewels competes with the local jewelry stores in each micro market. Reliance Brands such as Diesel, Quicksilver, etc. compete with their international competitive brands.

This is just the beginning. Look how Reliance is going to grow leaps and bounds in times to come. I am still sure that they wouldn’t have a JV with the global biggies such as Wal-Mart, Carrefour, etc. They would rather grow organically in times to come.

The game gets more interesting.

Another New store Opening?!?

Retailers in India seem to be continuing their efforts to open new stores, despite a slowing economy, higher import values, a falling rupee, increasing inflation and a weak consumer sentiment. This has been evident in the Retail Sales over the last two Quarters of this calendar year especially in high-value items such as A/Cs, Refrigerators, LCD TVs, automobiles including two-wheelers and four-wheelers. On one side, Retailers are offering huge discounts to lure customers – in India, Q1 & Q4 (for Financial Year starting April onwards) are essentially the most difficult times for clearing inventories and it is relatively easier in Q2 & Q3 due to the impending Festival and Marriage seasons. The above mentioned macro-economic factors haven’t helped them either. And Product ECommerce (excluding Ticketing services which account for over USD 8.5 Billion) which is estimated at over USD 2 Billion (approx. Rs. 11,500 Crores) is the biggest competition today for many Brick & Mortar Retailers, at least in the metros and mini-metros where Consumers have a reasonably quick and safe internet connectivity. And on the other side, large stores are being inaugurated in the hope that consumers would still like to visit and shop. We truly live in two contrasting worlds, to say the least. India's largest retailer, Future Group, which runs Central Malls, Pantaloon Fashions – a Department store chain, Big Bazaar Hypermarkets and FoodBazaar supermarkets among various other formats and models has scaled back its expansion from 2.5 million to 2 million square feet this fiscal year due to an economy growing at its weakest in nine years. The growth rate was 5.3 percent on an annual basis in the March quarter.

To drive footfalls to the store, continuously and consistently is one of the key challenges for Retailers anywhere in the world. That the population in India is huge is a bonus factor. However, conversions are miniscule. In the apparel and lifestyle formats, conversions range from 8-15% (those who buy as against those who enter the stores) while in consumer durables and brown goods, it is even lower. For Malls, which are destinations and are expected to attract significant footfalls, the conversions range from 3-5% and maybe lower in some cases (on a lower base of footfalls, usually). Given this fact, Retailers are in a frenzy opening newer stores within existing cities as well as in newer cities. One such example is Viveks, one of the oldest Consumer Durable Retailers in South India which was also the first one to start an EMI option in the early 90s when the Indian Economy was just opening up. It is rather surprising that the Retailer chose to remain a regional player, unlike its later counterparts such as EZone (part of Future Group) and Croma (from the house of Tatas) who quickly increased scale and went national with their presence. EZone is having operational challenges but that is not because of expansion but rather due to internal issues. To add to the woes of Consumer Durable Retailers, Hypermarket Chains such as Hypercity, Big Bazaar, Star Bazaar, etc. also stock Electronic Goods.

Challenges for Consumer Durable Retailers

Footfalls

To expect continuous footfalls all through the week is rather not practical. Instead, Retailers focus on weekend shopping festivals, usually for short durations. This is the time when Shoppers visit Retail stores and chances of conversion are higher!

Service

Superior Customer Service is something everyone talks about but is not generally followed all the time. And Customer Service is not just a gentle staff doing some smooth-talking and smart selling. It includes all the moments of truth – from hygiene factors such as lighting, A/c, Parking, etc. as well as product knowledge and friendly staff.

Differentiation

Multiple Retailers sell the same Brands and products. So why should a customer actually shop with one Retailer and not with another? Honestly, there is no clear answer. Consumers do not buy products, they buy Brands. And this includes the Retailer’s Brand Value as well, on which they should be focusing on.

Ecommerce

Showrooming – a prevalent concept in the West where shoppers visit Retail stores to check out products and prices but ended up ordering on Amazon.com or other ECommerce portals is brewing in India too. So, the difficulty of touch-and feel is negated. Another challenge is paying by Cash which is also something that ECommerce players have started over the recent months. Lastly, the convenience of getting the product on hand immediately – something that ECommerce players are finding it difficult to deliver but are successfully meeting customers’ requirements within 2-3 days in general.

With so many challenges, I wonder at times whether Retailing is worth the effort at all. For some, it’s a question of growth, for many it’s a matter of survival. With the opening of FDI in Retail sooner than later, the Big boys with boat loads of cash are going to lap up market share easily and faster. Interesting times ahead.

Driving footfalls…

It has been the talk of the town for sometime now, the new BlackBerry Playbook, the tablet from Research In Motion.There are thousands of reviews online and I am not going to delve into it for now. I got my hands on it three weeks back (even before it was launched in India) when a friend of mine who had brought it from the US showed it to me. Pretty engaging stuff, with its plusses and drawbacks. But what interested me to analyse and write this column was an email which I received a weeks back from EZone, India’s largest electronics store from The Future Group. There were actually two, one for a pre-booking and another stating that the wait was over and the Playbook™ is Finally Here. Am sure the mailer would have gone to hundreds, or maybe thousands of email accounts and would have pulled quite a few to the store over the past few days. I myself visited a few stores of EZone and Croma (TRENT Enterprises, part of the TATA Group) over the past few days and the results were amazing! Of the six different stores that I went to in Bangalore, two didn’t have stocks – I was informed by the sales executive that the “Catchment” for that store was not expected to explore Tablets! Another store had just the Playbook and an iPad, there were no other Tablets from any other Brand. And at one of the largest showrooms of one of the Retailers, there were crowds across the store in every section and surprisingly, there was no staff to attend the curious seekers at the area that stocked “Tablets” although there were atleast 6 different brands which were available.  Shoppers explored themselves (none of them were functional since WiFi was not connected) and moved on – one could imagine how many “Tablets” they would have sold today!

Elsewhere in the world, in the US, you can collect boatloads of kicks™ in the kicks Reward Program and unlock awesome exclusive deals at your favourite stores. Walk into Target, Best Buy, Macy's, American Eagle, Sports Authority, Crate&Barrel, West Elm, Wet Seal and the largest Simon malls. Open the Shopkick™ app on your iPhone or Android phone in the entrance area, and wait for a few seconds. That's it! Your Shopkick app will reward you instantly. It's fun. You can get rewards at all 1,300 Best Buy and Best Buy Mobile stores in the United States, and at all Crate&Barrel and West Elm stores! And in many major cities you will find more stores with walk-in rewards, like Target, Macy's, American Eagle, Sports Authority Wet Seal and Simon Malls. Shopkick is adding more stores in more cities every month. Cool rewards like iTunes gift cards, Restaurant vouchers, Best Buy/Target/Macy's/American Eagle/Sports Authority gift cards, Facebook Credits, movie tickets, or if you go all out, True Religion jeans, a Coach handbag, or a 3D 55" Sony Bravia HDTV. And if you want to change the world, donate your kicks to 30 different causes! And all this, just to woo shoppers to walk into a Retail Store!

Look at the contrast. In one country, there are not enough sales staff to manage shoppers and potential customers who walk into the store. And in another scenario where shoppers are “paid” to just visit the stores! According to the Shopkick program, as you walk into the stores, there are specific sections where you get higher kicks™ and one can keep accumulating them. There are also certain products, which by mere scanning fetches additional kicks. I did try to download the Android app in my phone, but I got a message that the app was not applicable in my country!

What makes me wonder, is how Retailers need to woo shoppers to walk-in to their stores and convert them into buyers. While the first part is not so difficult in India – with less than 10% of the Retail Industry being organized, and there is no dearth of footfalls walking into Retail formats, it is indeed important for Retailers to focus on;

• Merchandise Availability – This would be a game changer between those who remain in the business and those who don’t…
• Customer Service – the Retailer might have the products, but if they are not showcased well to potential buyers, then the conversion is not bound to happen; and not just this time, even the next time too!

Sales are happening despite these, but its just a matter of time for shoppers to move to alternative avenues for shopping. An ASSOCHAM Report suggests that the expected market size of online shopping in India is about USD 2 Billion pa. Forget shoppers walking off to neighbouring stores, they may be shopping on their mobile phones and tablets sitting at the favourite Coffee Day outlets! And then, I would be writing a column on that trend, from a cafe indeed!