Shoppers’ Stop plans to add 1 million sq ft over the next three years. This would mean 18 new department stores by 2013, the highest addition in the company’s history. Currently it has 29 department stores and five Hypercity outlets, apart from Crossword bookstore, and specialty store MAC, among others.

Gourmet Gulf charts out plans for expansion in India & UAE

Gourmet Gulf Company, a food and beverage retail company operating top-tier brands in the Gulf region, has unveiled ambitious expansion plans for the Middle East and India, with its franchise-driven strategy targeting 100 units by 2014. The company expansion plans will include opening 17 outlets in 2010.

FUJIFILM India Pvt. Ltd., the wholly owned subsidiary of FUJIFILM Corporation, Japan, one of the world’s largest photographic solutions company, today announced that it has chalked out decisive retail sales and customer care strategies to consolidate its presence in the country.

The call of the global consumer to let fashion go organic has driven the denim heavyweight Arvind Ltd to manufacture organic denims. For the first time since the textile tycoon introduced denim in India in 1984, its Naroda plant has taken to manufacturing organic denims.

Annual sales seasons offer windfall gains in many ways, and not just for consumers. Leading department store chains Pantaloons and Shoppers Stop are, for instance, utlising new resources to push off-price sales on the shop floor. In partnership with Retail Training Solutions (RTS), based in Noida, the retailers are optimising the burgeoning skills of management students for end-of-season sales.

Retail sector advocates stringent employee background check

To contain pilferage of goods by employees, the domestic retail industry is in the process of creating a database of people employed by it and verifying their backgrounds. The Retail Association of India (RAI) has tied up with CRP Technologies, human resources (HR) consultancy and background verification firm, to create the database.

Follow the young crowd, hook it with the stuff they freak out on, and you will have customers checking into your food and cafe outlets in no time. This unique marketing mantra adopted by restaurants mushrooming in India is done using the social networking platform, mainly Facebook. And there are no advertisement spends on this innovative idea.

Foreign investors violating FDI rules by using their test-marketing licences for doing large-scale retail business and even for product manufacturing, could be in for trouble. The government is planning to come out with strict norms to check these violations, most rampant in the retail sector.

The Rs 1,450-crore Aditya Birla Retail is open to offloading between 10 and 15 per cent stake in its company to private equity players to boost its retail operations.Currently the retailer, which runs the retail chain More, is funded by debt, but going forward there is a likelihood of raising funds through private equity or even finding a strategic partner who could infuse fresh equity into the still unprofitable venture.

Hypercity forays into Punjab

Hypercity Retail (India) Ltd, one of India’s finest hypermarket chain, has launched its outlet in Amritsar, Punjab. The 1,00,000 square feet store is situated at AlphaOne mall, Amritsar.

Study by Janak, the designer wear brand has just launched a couture collection only for men called Manoj and Ayush Mehra. The brand plans to pump in Rs 5 crore for the new collection.

McDonald’s has had to innovate its way through India: Vegetarian fare, home delivery, breakfast menu, extended hours and so on. As a result, the McDonald’s model in India looks very different from anywhere else in the world. Most of these steps have added incremental revenue. The company is now all set to launch its web-based delivery service in March.

Organic India which is involved in organic farming in Uttar Pradesh and export of herbal products abroad has now embarked upon setting up its own chain of exclusive retail stores in India. The company has already opened an exclusive retail store in Maharashtra and is in the process of inaugurating six more stores in Delhi, Chandigarh, Hyderabad, Bhopal, Nagpur and Lucknow by March end.

mjunction Services, the 50:50 joint venture of SAIL and Tata Steel for providing India’s largest e-commerce platform, has now teamed up with YObykes, from the stable of Electrotherm India (auto division), India’s largest selling electric two-wheeler, to kick off an online auto retail initiative.

U. V. Retail is presenting Groceryshop.in – first of its kind Online Supermarket in India. Currently this service is available only in Mumbai. It is a venture promoted by Davinder Goyal.

The runaway success of India's first floating supermarket has enthused its owner Kerala Consumerfed to think of launching a floating mall, probably the world's first, that will take modern retail to villages by the backwaters.

Polaris Launches IStore Linux

Polaris Software Lab said that its wholly-owned subsidiary Polaris Retail Infotech (PRIL) has launched a Linux-powered retail store management solution called ' iStore Linux.' PRIL has signed up Samsonite to roll out iStore Linux in its 60 exclusive brand outlets across India. iStore, jointly launched by PRIL and IBM in 2009, is the first SOA-based retail solution in India that is built on the open-standards-based Java platform.

Dynamic Vertical Solutions (DVS) announced being chosen to set up its “Retail Center of Excellence” in India by LS Retail.The “Retail Center of Excellence”, is an initiative to provide retailers of all sizes insights into usage and application of cutting edge technologies in the retail industry and would showcase an end-to-end solution roadmap for the retail industry.