Boston Days - Part 16

Fifty Dollars. Eighteen Hours. One Swedish Brand.

(I am writing "Boston Days" as a series of articles for quick reference for myself and other retail pilgrims. This article covers what a last-minute airport purchase revealed about the enormous, and largely unmade, opportunity that Travel Retail holds for brands worldwide.)

Not every retail discovery is planned. Some are born of desperation.

Over a fortnight in Boston — strenuous, stimulating, sleepless. Settled into the departure waiting area before my Emirates flight home — fourteen hours to Dubai, four more to Chennai — I reached for my Huawei earpiece. 

One of the soft ear buds of my Huawei was gone! Security checkpoint, most likely. One ear of silence is inconvenience enough for an eighteen-hour journey. I was far too tired to retrace my steps.

I walked into InMotion — the largest airport-based electronics retailer in the United States, with over 120 stores across 62 airports, owned by retail giant WHSmith. 

Apple, Bose, Sony, JBL, Beats, Sennheiser — all gleaming under focused track lighting, all projecting the confidence of brands that know their channel. 

A prominent Bose display ran a "Save USD 50" offer; even at the promoted price, nothing came under USD 130. The associate was absorbed in Reels — thumbing through short videos, fully committed to the feed. 

When I asked her which SKUs were on promotion, she glanced up with visible reluctance, pocketed her phone with some effort, and delivered a walkthrough that felt more like obligation than service. I walked out unconvinced.

The first Hudson Newsstand nearby was visibly shutting down — lights dimming, staff pulling stock, the energy of a place already closed in spirit. 

"Aren't you supposed to be open 24 hours — this being an international airport?" The young man had no real answer neither an intention to reply. Data point number two on customer service excellence. I moved on.

The second Hudson, barely a hundred metres away — two stores within a stone's throw of each other, a curiosity I am saving for another article — had a wider selection. Familiar brands under USD 50. 

And then a name I didn't recognise. Sudio. I stopped. A quick search told me enough. 

Founded in Stockholm in 2012 by engineers and music enthusiasts. Present across 16,000 stores globally — with confirmed travel retail presence in Japan, South Korea, Hong Kong, and at Malaysia's KLIA2 via Heinemann Asia Pacific, alongside in-flight partnerships with SAS Group. 

The A3 Pro sat at USD 50: Active Noise Cancellation, Bluetooth 5.4, IPX4 splash resistance, metallic accents in a palette that whispered rather than shouted. For a brand built by engineers with an audiophile's DNA, worth every dollar of the bet.

What also caught my eye was the Sudio Flyg — a compact Bluetooth transmitter that connects wireless earbuds directly to a seat's 3.5mm in-flight entertainment jack, including dual-jack aircraft systems. Up to twelve hours of battery. Around USD 30. Elegant, specific, and overdue.

Fifty dollars and fifteen minutes later, I was listening to music. Sudio carried me through the next eighteen hours without a complaint.

A Swedish brand. Made in China. Discovered at a major American gateway airport. By an Indian heading home. That is the full circle Travel Retail makes possible.

And yet — Sudio, I learnt, is absent from most major European hubs. 

In China, dominant local brands make meaningful entry near-impossible. In India, the brand has no official presence at all. 

I had always thought the neglect of Travel Retail was an Indian problem. That evening in Boston, I understood it is a worldwide one. The brands still leaving this channel under-served are leaving their very best introductions unmade.

Boston was once again teaching me. Thank you, Boston!

(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, Part 10, Part 11, Part 12, Part 13 and Part 14here.

Boston Days - Part 6

The Cleaning Liquid I Couldn’t Find. And What It Said About the World’s Most Advanced Retail Market.

(I am writing “Boston Days” as a series of articles for quick reference for myself and other retail pilgrims. This article covers the “Indian Quick Commerce boom”)

It started with a dirty iPad keyboard.

Three weeks of intensive sessions, constant note-taking, and the kind of daily use that leaves a screen looking like it has lived a full life. I needed a cleaning liquid. A simple, everyday SKU. The kind of thing that sits on a shelf in any electronics accessories aisle back home.

I walked into the nearest neighbourhood store. The staff looked at me the way you look at someone asking for something that simply does not exist in their world.

I tried another. Same result.

I turned, predictably, to Amazon. Thursday delivery. This was Monday. Prime or no Prime, apparently, does not always mean fast.

And that is when it hit me — not as a grievance, but as a genuine retail observation.

I am sitting in the city that gave the world MIT, Harvard, the internet, and more patents than most countries have produced in their entire history. And I cannot get a bottle of screen cleaner delivered to my door before the week is out.

Back in Chennai, I would have opened Zepto. Nine minutes. Done.

That contrast stayed with me longer than it should have, because it is not actually a logistics story. It is a structural one.

India’s quick commerce — Blinkit, Zepto, Swiggy Instamart — was never designed in a boardroom as a solution to affluence. 

It was built to solve a very Indian problem: the gap between what modern consumers needed and what traditional retail could deliver. Dark stores, hyperlocal networks, mobile-first consumers, and a density of demand in our cities did the rest.

America’s retail architecture was built around a different model entirely. Large-format stores. Vast parking lots. The weekly family grocery run. A suburban rhythm of shopping that was never designed for impulse or urgency at the last mile.

The demand density that makes a dark store economically viable simply does not exist the same way in Boston’s residential neighbourhoods. Labour costs and real estate economics add further complexity. 

And so, despite GoPuff and DoorDash Dash Mart and Instacart’s best efforts, quick commerce here remains fragmented, expensive, and largely confined to dense urban pockets.

Amazon is trying. Walmart GoLocal is trying. The intent is visible. The execution, at scale, is still some distance away.

I eventually found a workaround, as one always does. But the question stayed with me through the rest of the day.

India built quick commerce out of necessity. And in doing so, leapfrogged the very markets that once set the global retail agenda.

That is a sentence I would not have expected to write ten years ago. I find that I mean it rather completely.

(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 2

(I am writing “Boston Days” as a series of articles for quick reference for myself and other retail pilgrims. This article covers the “Challenges of optimal merchandising”)

After dinner on Sunday night, my batchmates bid goodnight even as I entered Circle K convenience store in downtown Boston. One of them asked me what I was going to shop. I replied that this is just another classroom for me to learn! 

There are moments in a retail professional’s life when the store does the teaching, and you simply have to be still enough to listen.

Inside, I found what you’d expect from a well-run c-store. 

Snacks, packaged food, bakery products, beverages — Pepsi, juices, bottled water stacked neatly. A tobacco wall doing what tobacco walls typically do. No alcohol — this particular outlet had clearly made its choice on Boston’s licensing landscape.

I walked the store in under three minutes. Nothing caught my eye particularly — until I reached the billing counter.

There it was. A universal travel adapter. USD 15. Sitting right at eye level, at the point of sale, as though it had been waiting specifically for me.

I had been struggling for two days with my Indian plug and the American Type A socket. I’d improvised, but barely. And here was the solution, placed precisely where it would find me at my most receptive.

I picked it up. I paid. I was back on the street in under ninety seconds.

That one transaction has stayed with me as a retail practitioner.

Here is the thing about category management — the discipline we teach, debate, and deconstruct in every retail seminar — placing the right product at the right place at the right time at the right price for the right consumer. 

Every retailer I have worked with knows this, almost by reflex.

And yet, how many of them apply it rigorously to the non-glamorous, non-FMCG accessories that sit quietly, almost apologetically, in their stores?

Planogram optimisation, when practised honestly, should begin with margin contribution per centimetre of shelf space — not with brand equity, volume targets, or vendor negotiation leverage.

FMCG products — biscuits, shampoos, soaps, beverages — are essential. They drive footfall. But net margins rarely cross 8-12%. Trade schemes, returns, damages, and seasonal promotions erode even that thin number further.

A travel adapter, a universal charger, a power bank, or a cable — priced at a healthy premium, placed at the billing counter, propelled by pure necessity — can deliver 50–60% gross margins with zero promotional support and zero scheme cost.

No gondola end negotiation. No loyalty programme. No scheme. Just the right product, in the right place, for a consumer with no time and no alternatives.

The Indian convenience retail sector is still in its formative years. But the lesson from a Circle K billing counter in downtown Boston is clear and directly transferable.

High-margin functional accessories are hiding in plain sight. They deserve a planogram. They deserve a category manager who sees beyond the FMCG gondola.

They deserve, at the very least, to be placed where a distracted Indian retailer — jaywalking through life — can actually find them.

(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.