Boston Days - Part 11

The Floor Never Lies. A Levi's Story.

(I am writing "Boston Days" as a series of articles for quick reference for myself and other retail pilgrims. This article covers what a Levi's store in downtown Boston taught me about frontline investment, people culture and the only leadership strategy that never goes on sale.)

Every retail store tells you the truth eventually. You just have to know where to look.

Not at the window display. Not at the promotional banners. At the floor. At the people on it. At what they do when no one is watching — and whether that changes when the store gets busy.

Labor Day in America is more than a national holiday. The first Monday of September each year, the country pauses to honour its working men and women — and then, with cheerful irony, heads straight to the shops. 

Retailers treat it as one of the season's defining sales events. Discounts go deep. Footfall spikes. The floor gets difficult to manage. That is precisely when culture either shows up or gets exposed.

I walked into the Levi's store in downtown Boston a few days before Labor Day 2026.

Promotions everywhere. Deep discounts. Stacks of denim at prices that stopped you mid-stride. Trial rooms with a moving queue. Customers working the racks with that particular focused energy that only a genuine deal creates. 

The kind of footfall that tests every system a store has — replenishment, trial room management, billing, floor discipline.

And yet the floor was immaculate.

Every rack faced. Every folded stack clean and aligned. An associate moved quietly down an aisle straightening merchandise while a customer waited at the trial room. 

Unhurried. Unannounced. 

Not performing for a manager. Simply doing what they had been trained — and trusted — to do. The reset was continuous, invisible and relentless. Clockwork, in the middle of a frenzy.

I have seen this before. Not often enough, but I have seen it.

A sunny afternoon in March 2005. Java Green Coffee Shop, Forum Mall, Bangalore. Sanjeev Mohanty, then Vice President - India, sat across and interviewed me for the role of leading United Colors of Benetton's Southern India operations. 

What stayed with me from that conversation was not the questions. It was his conviction — unhurried, like that associate on the Boston floor — that stores are built from the inside out. People first. Standards second. Sales will follow.

Over the year that followed, working under his leadership, we set up five new stores across four states. We also envisioned what was then the largest UCB store in India — 10,000 square feet at the famed Indira Nagar in Bangalore. 

Every one of those stores worked because the people in them understood why the work mattered.

After a long stint at UCB followed by Jabong, Sanjeev went on to build Levi's India into a formidable, consumer-connected business before being elevated to lead Levi Strauss & Co.'s US and Canada operations — the brand's largest commercial cluster in the world. 

That arc does not happen by accident. It happens because you never stop believing that the frontline associate is the business.

What I saw in that downtown Boston store was not good operations management. It was culture made visible.

The wages you pay, the incentives you design, the wellbeing you protect, the training you invest in, the mentoring you make time for — none of these are HR activities. 

They are the actual work of leadership. They are what determines whether your floor holds its standard on a chaotic pre-holiday Saturday.

The associate folding jeans in the middle of a sale frenzy is not completing a task. That person is protecting your brand, enabling your conversion and defending your margin — simultaneously, willingly and at scale.

Take care of your frontline. They will take care of everything else.

Boston was teaching me. Again.

(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, Part 9 and Part 10 here.

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.

Bira 91 and the lesson every entrepreneur should take away

Bira 91 was once one of India’s most talked-about startup success stories. 

Founded by Ankur Jain in 2015, the brand brought a fresh, urban, craft-beer identity to a market long dominated by conventional labels. 

It looked like a perfect founder story: a distinctive product, strong consumer appeal, investor backing, and a growing presence across bars, restaurants, and retail channels.

But the latest chapter in the Bira 91 story is a sobering one. 

Jain has stepped down from the board and executive roles of B9 Beverages as on 23 July 2026, after a settlement with lenders and investors. What began as a bold brand-building journey eventually turned into a case study in how rapid growth, weak governance, and regulatory missteps can overwhelm even a celebrated consumer brand.

The early years were all about momentum. Bira 91 tapped into a young, aspirational audience and made craft beer feel cool, modern, and accessible. 

The brand’s design language, product positioning, and retail visibility helped it stand out in a crowded market. For a while, it seemed to have cracked the code on how to build a premium beverage brand in India.

However, success also brought pressure. 

Expansion demands, high operating costs, cash burn, and a complex regulatory environment began to expose the cracks. In a heavily regulated sector like alcohol, compliance is not a side issue. 

It is the business itself. Any structural or legal change, if handled poorly, can trigger serious disruption across production, distribution, and sales.

That appears to be one of the biggest lessons from Bira 91. 

A business can have strong branding, enthusiastic investors, and consumer love, but still falter if its back-end systems are not built for scale. When cash flow tightens, salaries get delayed, employees lose confidence, and vendors start stepping back, the damage spreads quickly. 

The brand story may still shine on the outside, but the operating model begins to break down inside.

For entrepreneurs, the Bira 91 episode is especially relevant because it shows the difference between growth and durability. Growth gets attention. 

Durability keeps the business alive. Founders often focus on market excitement, funding rounds, and expansion milestones. But the real test comes in discipline: governance, compliance, working capital, and execution.

There is also a people lesson here. 

Companies do not scale on branding alone. They scale on trust. When employees, lenders, and partners begin to question leadership stability, even a strong consumer brand can lose momentum fast. 

That is why transparency and internal discipline matter as much as product innovation.

Bira 91’s story is not just about a founder’s exit. 

It is about the hard truth that many entrepreneurs learn too late: a great idea can win the market, but only a well-run company can survive it. For retail and consumer businesses, that is the real takeaway. 

Build the brand, yes. But build the system stronger.

Staff Empathy - Wake up India!

Like many of you, I too saw the viral video of the Zomato delivery guy consuming the food meant for Guests on his scooter. As a benefit of doubt, I initially thought he was eating the food he had ordered for himself or his family. I never shared the video and the ensuing Memes even to my close family or friends. Something stopped me from doing it. It takes me back to 1997 when I joined my first job as a part-time employee in erstwhile Madras. Being a humid city and blessed with four seasons of Summer through 12 months, the city was eponymous to a hot weather all through the year and about 20 days of winter. So Ice-Cream as a product category was a 12-month business opportunity and no wonder, “Baskin Robbins” set-up their second store in India here after debuting in Mumbai. I would study Computing at NIIT from 7am - 9pm and pursued B. Com from 4pm - 8pm at RKM Vivekananda College. A chance glance on the local tabloid and I saw there was a job opportunity at this shop and I headed. 

I got selected but the Franchisee wanted me to work all day which I couldn’t since I had classes in the morning and evening. So, I suggested I can work part time from 11am - 3pm which he agreed to for a monthly remuneration of Rs. 300. We were a crew of 6 and had to run all errands - from receiving stocks to cleaning tables to serving scoops. Around the same time, local brand “Arun” would sell their stick Ice-Cream for Rs. 5 while a scoop of Baskin would cost Rs. 33. We had to not just convince Customers to try and buy our offering but also justify why they should pay so much for the product.

The Franchisee was a shrewd businessman in his 30s and had an idea which took us all by surprise. He suggested that each of us can take any one scoop of ice-cream daily. There was a register we maintained and we tried as many flavours. Over a few days, we requested if we could take them home instead and make the family happy which he obliged. Over the weeks, we got tired of eating daily and said we wouldn’t do it anymore. The Franchisee had hit two mangoes with this move - he ensured we never pilfered the food; he ensured the staff knew what we were suggesting to Customers and so could sell them easily.

This was my first lesson in Retail, my first job as well. Frontend Retail Staff in India, most of them find it difficult to make ends meet. Salaries of CXOs have grown multi-fold in decades, but not that of these guys. So there is always a sense of remorse (at least for some of them) that they are unable to afford the products or services. I am not taking this as an excuse for living poor, after all that’s a choice too but they do really cannot afford even basic needs at times. I feel really bad for this Zomato delivery guy for all the negative publicity the society gave him. Imagine the humiliation his Mother, Wife and Children would face from their neighbourhood? Will anyone employ him again? With our excessive media trials, we have killed a family's reputation Sigh.

We have failed as a society, yet again thanks to our "one-upmanship" and self-styled righteousness in the garb of exposing someone who was at fault. Oh, btw that guys doesn't need our sympathy. The world needs more of our empathy. Am sure you agree. 

The Retail Staff (including the delivery staff) deserve better. Better Salary, better empathy and better social acceptance. When we give them something beyond what they deserve, they will not only display integrity but also build a better society that we live in. Remember, no one was born a thief. We just become one, thanks to circumstances.