Boston Days — Part 9

The Store That Spoke to Me. After I Had Already Left.

(I am writing “Boston Days” as a series of articles for quick reference for myself and other retail pilgrims. This article covers frontline culture — and what two factory outlets in Somerville taught me in ninety minutes.)

Assembly Row in Somerville is one of Greater Boston’s more interesting retail destinations. Open-air, mixed-use, genuinely alive on a warm August afternoon. I was there for two names: Nike and Puma.

Same street. Same concept. Ninety minutes between them. A very different education.

The Nike Factory Store is impossible to miss. 

Strong footfall. Unmistakable brand energy. Categories demarcated, range broad — everything that a factory outlet of the world’s largest sportswear brand should signal.

But something was off.

Merchandise was scattered. Shelves in various states of undress. Replenishment appeared to be an afterthought. Staff were few and visibly stretched. Customers were entirely on their own — not by design, simply by default.

The billing queue was long. Not the kind of long that means a great trading day. The kind that makes a motivated shopper quietly calculate whether waiting is worth it.

Footfall without conversion is noise. Brand strength got them through the door. What happened inside was another matter entirely.

Across the street stood the Puma Factory Store.

Fewer customers. Calmer energy. But immediately, noticeably different in composition. Staff were present — not just physically, but attending. The floor was managed. The store felt considered.

I spent over thirty minutes inside. Browsing, trying on, thinking. I stepped out without a purchase.

That is when it happened.

A Puma associate walked up — calmly, without rehearsed enthusiasm — and asked a simple question. Had I found what I was looking for?

It was an unremarkable interaction on the surface. Except it hadn’t happened inside Nike. And it happened here, after I had already left.

Someone had noticed that a person spent thirty minutes inside, walked out without buying, and was carrying unresolved intent. That is not a trained reflex. That is a culture.

A few kilometres away, inside an HBS classroom, I had spent an entire session the previous week discussing the Walmart case. 

Doug McMillon’s conviction — that Walmart’s greatest long-term competitive asset was its people — had generated sharp debate. His bets on frontline dignity and training were not HR policy. They were strategic capital allocation.

Standing on that Somerville sidewalk, I had just watched the same case play out. Not in a classroom. In real life.

One store had the crowd. The other had the conversation.

Ninety minutes at Assembly Row. No slides. 

No framework. Just one street, two stores, and a reminder that the greatest competitive advantage in retail has always been the person standing closest to the customer.

Boston was teaching me. Just not always inside a classroom.

(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.

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.

Boston Days - Part 5

Merchandise, Memories and Monetising Legacy

(I am writing “Boston Days” as a series of articles for quick reference for myself and other retail pilgrims. This article covers the “Merchandising opportunity in India”)

I wasn’t expecting a retail moment inside a Harvard Business School campus. But that’s the thing about retail — it finds you.

The COOP, run jointly by the MIT and Harvard communities, sits unobtrusively within the HBS campus. I almost walked past it. I’m glad I didn’t.

What struck me first was the depth. Not just the range of merchandise, but the depth within each category. Sizes, colours, variants — all available. Not just displayed. Actually in stock. 

Anyone who has spent years in Indian retail will know exactly why that distinction matters. Range is easy to claim. Availability is harder to deliver.

I moved through each section the way I always do in a retail format that has something to say — slowly, observantly. 

The pricing was nominal — deliberately so. This store isn’t trying to extract maximum value from a captive audience. It is serving a community. That restraint speaks to a retail philosophy I find increasingly rare, and quietly admirable.

The staff were warm and unhurried. Not trained-smile warm. Actually warm.

Before visiting, I had already browsed thecoop.com — same range, same brand identity, consistent experience across channels. I was quietly impressed. 

Right until I noticed there was no click-and-collect option for online orders. No store pick-up. In 2026. From an institution that has arguably shaped modern management thinking worldwide. I had to smile.

But that gap aside, the COOP does something far more important than sell merchandise. It monetises legacy. 

Harvard and MIT merchandise carries an aspirational weight that no marketing budget can manufacture. 

People don’t just buy a mug or a hoodie. They buy belonging. They buy aspiration. They buy a story they want to be part of.

And that’s when my mind travelled back home.

India’s IITs and IIMs command exactly that kind of emotional currency. I have met people across the country — and across the world — for whom an IIT or IIM connection is a life-defining identity. 

Alumni who wear that association with quiet, deep pride. Aspirants who dream of it. Parents who speak of it with reverence.

That is not just brand equity. That is retail gold.

And yet, what exists on the ground? 

IIM Indore has Merchand-I — sincere and meaningful, but modest in scale. IIT Madras runs a campus gift shop online. CampusMall powers online stores across several institutions. 

Third-party aggregators sell branded apparel without institutional ownership, campus presence or meaningful curation.

None of it adds up to a retail strategy.

If I were to seriously consider a start-up opportunity when I return to India, this would be the first one I’d put on the table. 

The market is real, the aspiration is built, and the white space is hiding in plain sight.

The COOP didn’t happen by accident. 

It is the result of a community deciding that its brand deserved a serious, well-executed retail expression. Someone needs to make that case to India’s premier institutions.

The brand is already built. The store is simply waiting to open.

(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.

Reflections: I didn’t sign up for this

It was a cold Saturday morning during end-January 2010. I was reading the Harvard Business Review (HBR) magazine outside the office of the Chairman of Café Coffee Day (CCD). 

It was a ritual at CCD that every 10 days, Late Mr. VG Siddhartha would meet the All India Business Development Team which I was heading, along with our CEO, COO and the Operations team.

We would display the potential real estate opportunities on a PPT, with my colleagues joining virtually from all across India. By the end of the meeting, we would collectively take a decision whether to lease or not the space, based on various metrics.

I was just into the role, and it was my 4th meeting or so with this elite group. 

When the Chairman came out of the Conference Room from the previous meeting, he saw me waiting outside with a puzzled look. This kept repeating over the next 2 times. The 10th floor was access-restricted, which means only a select few could access it.

A couple days later during a one-on one, my CEO told me to come only after he sends me a BBM (remember!) & not earlier. I gave a blank look to which he enquired what was the reason.

I said, I come to the 10th floor a tad earlier, just to read the HBR magazine as I couldn’t it afford otherwise to buy. Now, he gave me a puzzled look too.

When I met the cafe team at Dharmshala, 2010

Ahead of the next meeting, my CEO told me to come early and read the HBR, as advised by the Chairman. The news had gone to him, after all. 

I was a bit surprised and embarrassed at the same time; but then it was ok to chew my ego & read the HBR magazine when possible. And that’s what mattered finally.

16 years later, I was taking the evening cab from Hotel Taj Lands End after the completion of the first Module of the Senior Leadership Program (SELP) offered by Harvard Business School (HBS). 

I kept staring at the Mumbai skyline 360*. When I was crossing Kurla, I wondered how the baby born at Sion Hospital 5 decades ago, was now a big boy and was a student at the prestigious Harvard University (Mumbai camp). 

And he would soon become a Graduate (fingers crossed) at the Boston campus of HBS by the end of 2026!

All through the 35-min drive (which felt almost eternal), I was gathering all that happened during these past 15 days.

I was slowly absorbing what I have learned from four top Professors who had descended to India from Boston, exclusive to teach and to share their knowledge with us.

The 46 incredible people in our batch represent various industries, vocations and businesses, from all across India, the Middle East & the Philippines.

It would take me a lifetime, perhaps, to understand the kind of impact that this year-long course would create on a professional like me.

I had embraced the Retail Industry at a young age of 19 almost by chance, as a waiter scooping ice-cream at Baskin Robbins in Chennai in the year 1997.

Ever since, I have never looked back away from the Indian Retail Industry. Not that the other industries (or countries) are any less attractive or financially rewarding, but my roots were and are in the Indian Retail Industry and I shall remain here forever.

The Leadership lessons from over 30+ case studies that we have discussed, disagreed, debated and left them open-ended – for, that’s how cases are done - with my Professors and batch mates were an eye opener on Leadership.

After all, one of the key roles of a Leader, according to me, is to be a good listener first.

Before we meet again in less than 12 weeks, we have a lot of reflections (and perhaps some executions at workplace as well) to be done on what has already been taught, as well as take up other online assignments as part of the Course.

When Prof. Stefan Thomke asked me a few days back about the course and my leaning towards it, I simply said, “I didn’t sign up for this Prof; I thought it was a going to be a 3-feet swimming pool where I could play and have fun and lo behold, this is an ocean. And by the way, I do not know swimming either”. 

But then, I do not have a choice but to uphold the values of being a student (and later on, an alumni) of the world’s most prestigious “Harvard” badge. I assured him, I will do my best. 

As Amitabh Bachchan would quip in a different context in the film K3G (2001), “Prampara hai beta, Paramapara hai…”

Loving this avatar as an eternal student of Retail. And I have Miles To Go, after all.