Thought of the Day:
“Nothing is particularly hard if you divide it into small jobs.”
Henry Ford
Did you know?
James Fixx, the man who popularized jogging in America died of a heart attack while running.
India:
- Shopper Stop elevates Salil Nair as the new CEO: Shoppers Stop Ltd, the country's largest listed department store operator, Wednesday said it has promoted Salil Nair as the new chief executive. Nair, a 19-year veteran at Shoppers Stop is currently the COO of the company and will assume the CEO position next month. As the COO, Nair was heading operations, buying and merchandising and store design teams. As the CEO, Nair will spearhead the retailer's strategy, store operations and technological innovation among others. Nair will report to Govind Shrikhande, managing director.
- Samsonite aims Rs 1,000-cr sales in India by 2015: Global luggage and travel accessories major Samsonite is aiming a business of Rs 1,000 crore in India by December 2015. "In 2013, we had domestic sales of Rs 647 crore in India and want to surpass Rs 1,000 crore by December 2015," Samsonite South Asia CEO India and Middle East E P Suresh Menon said here today. To achieve the target the company was also trying to enhance its reach in smaller towns and reduce entry price point for its largest selling brand American Touristor to Rs 2,200 as against Rs 3,000 now. "We are reducing the entry price point of American Touristor to Rs 2,200 from Rs 3,000. This year our focus for opening new stores would be on smaller towns. This brand accounts for 75 per cent of revenue in India," Menon said. Samsonite will open 60 new stores and of which 40 will be for American Touristor. The company had also invested Rs 100 crore in creating a new facility at Nasik for soft luggage to strengthen the segment. "Out of the total units sold, 80 per cent is in the soft luggage segment. With the new Nasik facility we have also introduced Samsonite soft luggage products," a company official said. However, at the same time Samsonite was also planning to introduce their luxury brand Hartmann in the near future, Menon said. Hartmann, a US luxury luggage brand, was acquired by Samsonite in 2012 and is currently been tested in India with a soft launch.
- Titan ties up with Montblanc for single brand retail: Watches and jewellery retailer Titan Co. Ltd. said it entered a joint venture with luxury goods maker Montblanc International GmbH for single brand retail trade in India. The company did not disclose more details in a filing with the BSE. Germany-based Montblanc sells premium pens, leather products, watches, perfumes and jewellery. “This JV will help Titan getting hands on with world-class luxury play; Titan is excited with this exposure to tie up with Richemont group,” Edelweiss Securities analyst Abneesh Roy wrote in a report. Roy said Titan would run the Montblanc boutiques in India and the stores would sell Montblanc’s entire range of products. Titan, a joint venture between Tamil Nadu Industrial Development Corp.and the Tata Group, started out as a watch seller in the mid 1980s but is now attempting to be a lifestyle products retailer. It already sells jewellery, eyewear, belts and the company entered other product categories last year. Titan launched a line of fragrances called Skinn in September, and in December that it would sell helmets under the Fastrack label.
- Air India offers up to 30% discount: Days after budget airlines led by SpiceJet lowered ticket rates by up to 75 per cent to avail early summer season bookings, Air India joined the fare war on Wednesday. The state-owned airline announced up to 30 per cent discount on advance ticket purchases, with an extended travel period on select flights on local routes as well as domestic leg of international flights. The scheme covers 115 flights and offers about 30 per cent discount on the apex 30, 60 and 90 levels, Air India said. The booking for tickets under the short-term promotion sale bonanza will start on Thursday and continue till March 1 for travel between March 29 and September 30, it said. Under the offer, a one-way ticket for the Goa-Mumbai route will cost Rs 1,586 (excluding taxes), while passengers will have to shell out Rs 3,470 (excluding taxes) for journey between Mumbai and Kolkata. One-way journey on the Thiruvananthapuram-Mumbai route will cost Rs 2,557, while the fare for a Delhi-Lucknow flight is Rs 1, 889.
- Pizza hut to start outlets on National Highways: Expanding its base further inside the country, Yum! Brands Inc -- the company which owns 'KFC' and 'Pizza Hut' chains -- would start up new pizza restaurants on the two busy national highways this year. The company, which is on expansion mode, would start up to three new drive in centers of Pizza Hut on National Highway 1 (Delhi-Mumbai) and 8 (Delhi-Amritsar). "We would start up to three new Pizza Hut centers on the NH 1 and 3 this year. We would open one of the highway centers very shortly," Pizza Hut India General Manger Sanjiv Razdan told PTI. These new drive-in highway centers would come in franchise model with both sit-down and take-away options. Yum! Brands has already started KFC chains on national highways. "But this would be the first one on NH from Pizza Hut," said Razdan. However, he declined to share the locations of the coming centers. Yum! Brands, which plans to add another 150 new outlets of Pizza Hut, KFC and Taco Bell this year would expand in the tier 2 cities with competitive pricing. "We have created an entry level value pack, where one can get a pizza at sub Rs 50 price... We want to unlock the potential of these places," he said. According to him, the company has launched attractive price and scheme.
- Mars looking to ramp up sourcing from India: Mars Inc is looking to grow huge volumes of cocoa and peanuts in India as the world's largest candy maker wants to make the country a major sourcing hub, its chief agricultural officer Howard Shapiro told TOI. Shapiro said the US-based food manufacturing company (net sales $33 billion) is working with various Indian agricultural research institutions and universities to develop cocoa and peanut crops with higher yielding capacities and multiple disease-resisting properties. "We have embarked on a specific and detailed programme to investigate the potential supply of cocoa products and peanuts from India," Howard said. "In the next two years, we will start sourcing cocoa locally. It will take at least five years before we start sourcing peanuts since we are trying to develop crops free of aflatoxins, which are toxic substances found in various foods." Mars, which sources products and services worth $20 million from India at present, has partnered with Hyderabad-based non-profit agricultural research organization Icrisat and Directorate of Groundnut Research to develop new groundnut varieties in India. One such peanut development programme is reaching out to over 2000 farmers.
- Snapdeal raises $133.7 million from existing investors including eBay: Snapdeal.com, one of India’s largest online marketplaces, is raising $133.7 million from existing investors including the US-based marketplace eBay Inc. EBay led the new round of funding in Snapdeal, raising its stake in the company following an initial investment made in 2013, eBay said in a statement. “We see eBay’s second round of investment in Snapdeal as an endorsement of our strategy and progress. All our current institutional investors including Kalaari Capital, Nexus Venture Partners, Bessemer Venture Partners, Intel Capital and Saama Capital have participated in this round as well which is a strong endorsement of our team,” Snapdeal co-founder and chief executive Kunal Bahl said. Snapdeal, which sells a wide range of products including apparel, electronics and books, along with Flipkart, Myntra and Jabong, is among the leaders in India’s fledgling e-commerce market. The e-commerce market is worth $3.1 billion and is estimated to grow to $22 billion in five years, according to a report by CLSA in November. More than 100 e-commerce sites have shut down over the past two years as investors pulled back from the sector after seeing sites burn millions of dollars on chasing customers without much success. The market leaders, Flipkart, Myntra and Jabong, have all raised between $50 million and $360 million over the past eight months or so.
- Bachchan Effect: Firms may Uncork Tougher Celeb Deals: Ever since Amitabh Bachchan suggested that the end of his endorsement of Pepsi had something to do with the product’s integrity, companies with brand ambassadors have been wondering what they can do to make sure celebrities don’t turn on them. One option they say is stricter clauses that would save them the embarrassment of being disparaged in public. Leading companies across sectors such as Sony, Dabur, Marico and Emami have a number of Alist celebrities on their roster, including Deepika Padukone, Katrina Kaif, Madhuri Dixit, Priyanka Chopra, Ajay Devgn and Vidya Balan. At least eight companies ET spoke to said they were planning to include fresh clauses stating that neither the company nor the celebrity could disparage each other or financial penalties preventing ambassadors from speaking against the brand. Companies “expect that celebrities not only respect legal agreements but also a relationship that goes beyond legal clauses,” one executive said. Dabur is looking at a non-disparagement lifetime clause, said a senior executive.
- Canon Gets Ready to Open Fire on E-tailers: The gloves are off in the fight between the top electronic brands and online marketplaces with the first punch likely to be thrown by Canon India, which is considering longer warranty periods for products bought offline to negate the steep discounts offered by e-tailers. The move is just one of the several measures that large brands are exploring to rectify the increasing tilt towards online shopping, as customers flock to websites that offer choices and prices traditional retailers can’t match. Lenovo and Toshiba have placed warnings on their websites telling customers that India’s three largest online marketplaces — Flipkart, Snapdeal and Amazon.in — are not authorised to sell their products. The apex body of the cellphone industry, Indian Cellular Association (ICA), is also planning to issue a consumer advisory on the checks a consumer needs to do before buying products online. “We are considering separate warranties, for example a oneyear warranty for online and 15 months for offline,” said Alok Bharadwaj, executive vice-president at Canon India. “The problem is that the online retailers are providing heavy discounts that destroy the price point of offline traders.”
International:
- Tokyo Sees Retail Shake-Up: Tokyo's Omotesando/Aoyama district is gearing up for a major shake-up in terms of luxury storefronts over the next few months. LVMH Moët Hennessy Louis Vuitton is redistributing the space in its One Omotesando building to accommodate a new Givenchy store as well as revamped locations for Celine and Loewe. The building used to house Fendi andDonna Karan, as well as Celine and Loewe. About a block down from the LVMH outpost,Kering is setting up flagships for two of its brands, Balenciaga and Alexander McQueen, in a new structure located near Prada's iconic Aoyama store. Kering had originally planned for the building to house Balenciaga and Saint Laurent flagships, as WWD reported in April of last year. Elsewhere in the neighborhood, Chanel is in the process of expanding its Omotesando flagship in the Gyre building, which also counts Maison Martin Margiela as a tenant. Chanel is currently revamping its existing store on the ground floor and taking over the space next door that was formerly occupied by Bulgari. Meanwhile, there could be another major development for the area. There is talk that an Apple Store might open along Omotesando avenue but that remains unconfirmed. "We've made no announcements about a store in that location," Apple Japan said via email.
- Home improvement retailer Lowe's posts strong sales growth: Lowe's Cos Inc reported strong sales growth in the fourth quarter, showing that the No. 2 U.S. home improvement retailer was closing in on market leader Home Depot Inc. Lowe's shares rose as much as 7 percent in premarket trading on Wednesday. The company said its net sales rose 5.6 percent to $11.66 billion in the fourth-quarter ended Jan. 31. Analysts on average were expecting sales of $11.67 billion, according to Thomson Reuters I/B/E/S. Lowe's posted a 3.9 percent rise in comparable store sales. Home Depot reported a 3 percent decline in overall sales on Tuesday, which some analysts viewed as an indication that the recent U.S. housing recovery was losing momentum. Lowe's said it expects 2014 total sales to rise by about 5 percent. That translates to about $56.07 billion. The company also forecast earnings of about $2.60 per share for the year ending Jan. 30, 2015. Analysts on average were expecting a profit of $2.64 per share on sales of $56.25 billion. Lowe's net income rose to $306 million, or 29 cents per share, in the fourth quarter from $288 million, or 26 cents per share, a year earlier. Analysts on average were expecting a profit of 31 cents per share.
- Google Sees no Threat from FB’s WhatsApp Acquisition: Google is not unduly worried about Facebook’s acquisition of Whatsapp as it does not compete with them in the small and medium business segment, a top company official said. Google’s vice-president and global head of SMBs, Allan Thygesen said the search engine giant was working on innovating solutions in messaging, among others, to help the businesses effectively engage with customers. “I think that WhatsApp is a terrific example of new messaging services. And they have done a fantastic job creating utility that was great for the businesses and consumers,” he said. However, “in terms of acquiring new customers, it is not really as obvious how Whatsapp is useful. So, I am not worried about WhatsApp as a competitor to destabilising our presence or competitor for Adwords.” Social media company Facebook agreed to buy Whatsapp, a mobile sharing platform provider, for $19 billion (nearly . 1.2 lakh crore) in cash and stock, earlier this month. Google’s Thygesen, who was in Hyderabad on Wednesday, said the internet search giant is spending a lot of resources to bring about innovation in messaging, including Google Hangout where businesses could do video conferencing with multiple entities from their phone, desktop or laptop. “We are making it available to companies at low cost as a competitive solution,” Thygesen said. Google India, which currently has a customer base of 3 lakh SMBs, is targeting at least half a million over the next year or so. Against 47 million SMBs in the country, the search engine giant sees the potential of getting online advertising from at least eight million.
- Roland Mouret Plots First New York Store: Roland Mouret has more to celebrate Thursday than his fall runway show in Paris — the designer is getting ready to open his first New York store this summer. Mouret met recently with Swedish architect Bozarth Fornell about his plans for the 1,400-square-foot Upper East Side space. Located at 952 Madison Avenue, the designer will take over what used to be the Bang & Olufsen space. This will mark Mouret’s second freestanding store, in addition to London. The New York location will sell the designer’s ready-to-wear, accessoriesand his White Collection, as well as select reissued items from his archives such as the Galaxy and Titanium dresses. “America was the first international market to support me, so it was important for me that it also be the site of my first store outside of the U.K. I wanted to create the world of Roland Mouret for amazing American women who want to discover my clothes [and] to build an atmosphere where she feels relaxed. This is a store but also a home away from home,” Mouret said. “I have experienced so much at our house at 8 Carlos Place in Mayfair, which has served as starting point of learning for me and has brought me closer to the Roland Mouret woman. I cannot wait to learn as much from our new home at 952 Madison Avenue.”
- Desert Hills Outlet to Get Upgrade: The upscaling of the outlet business continues. When Desert Hills Premium Outlets in Cabazon, Calif., unveils its $100 million, 146,000-square-foot expansion on April 24, it will introduce the first Alexander McQueen outlet store in the U.S. to value-conscious shoppers. In total, the expansion will enlarge the outlet shopping center to about 650,000 square feet and will house some 40 stores, including Max Mara, CH Carolina Herrera, La Perla and Wolford, as well as other first-to-the-U.S. outlet stores for Helmut Lang and Belstaff. “The luxury players are very selective about where they go. They have to be exclusive and maintain control over their brand. There are really only a handful of opportunities where they can go,” said Mark Silvestri, chief operating officer of Simon Property Group Inc.-owned Premium Outlets. “You can easily count the number of opportunities in North America that make sense for them, and we are fortunate to have some of the best centers.” Desert Hills Premium Outlets opened in 1990 and currently has 130 outlet stores that generate $1,300 in annual sales per square foot on average. Among those stores are Gucci, Marni, Saint Laurent, Bottega Veneta and Prada, which is increasing its retail footprint at the shopping center from 5,500 square feet to 7,500 square feet.
- Earnings Reports Help Lift Retail Stocks 1.4%: Investors breathed a sigh of relief as soft fourth-quarter earnings reports from retailers including Target Corp. and Abercrombie & Fitch Co. were better than many had feared and analysts had projected. The procession of not-as-bad-as-expected news continued after the markets closed as J.C. Penney Co. Inc. posted a fourth-quarter profit that, on an adjusted basis, translated into a smaller loss than the consensus estimate of analysts. Up nearly 2 percent in midday trading, the S&P 500 Retailing Industry Group finished the session at 933.16, up 1.4 percent, for its fifth consecutive trading day of gains. That was its highest closing mark since it ended at 934.76 on Jan. 3. The Dow Jones Industrial Average rose 0.1 percent to 16,198.41 while the S&P 500 was virtually unchanged at 1,845.16. Delia’s Inc. was the single biggest advancer among the retail, fashion and beauty stocks tracked by WWD, rising 24.2 percent to $1.20. Abercrombie & Fitch Co. managed the second largest gain,11.3 percent to close at $40.04, as its 58 percent decline in fourth-quarter profits, to $1.34 a share on an adjusted basis, was 31 cents better than analysts’ expectations. Similarly, Target Corp. also rallied, with shares up 7 percent to $60.49, after its 46 percent drop in quarterly earnings was in line with its most recent projections. However, The TJX Cos. Inc. saw its shares drop 1.2 percent to $60.29 when, despite higher revenues, its EPS for the quarter fell 1 cent shy of consensus estimates. Penney’s reported its results after the close of the markets. Shares were up 5.3 percent to $5.96 before their release and an additional 3.9 percent, to $6.19, in the immediate aftermath. Among those with declines, shares of Coldwater Creek Inc. fell 6.4 percent to 78 cents on the day while Birks Group Inc. surrendered 4.1 percent to close at $1.18. European stock markets dipped into negative territory on concerns about growth in emerging markets, with London’s FTSE 100 leading the way. The British market was down 0.5 percent to 6,799.15, followed by the CAC 40 in Paris and the DAX in Frankfurt, which both fell 0.4 percent to 4,396.91 and to 9,661.73 respectively. The FTSE MIB in Milan was also down 0.4 percent, to 20,398.10. Retail and luxury stocks were mostly down, with the exception of Moncler, which ticked up 1.5 percent to 13.40 euros; Gemfields, 2.1 percent to 36 pence, and Aeffe, 1.4 percent to 0.85 euros.
Currency:
· 1 USD= ₹ 62.040
· 1 EUR= ₹ 84.918
· 1 GBP= ₹ 103.445
· 1 AUD= ₹ 55.454
Glitter Meter: India
Gold (INR/10g) | Silver (INR/kg) | |||
City | Current | Change | Current | Change |
Chennai | 30780.00 | 80 | 48980.00 | 235 |
Mumbai | 30280.00 | 0 | 48980.00 | 235 |
Delhi | 30030.00 | 0 | 48980.00 | 235 |
Kolkata | 30160.00 | 10 | 48980.00 | 235 |
World Indices:
Exchange | Last | Change |
DJIA | 16198.41 | +18.75 |
FTSE 100 | 6799.15 | -31.35 |
CAC 40 | 4396.91 | -17.64 |
DAX | 9661.73 | -37.62 |
Nikkei | 14995.63 | +24.66 |
Hang Seng | 22625.98 | +188.54 |
Sensex | 20986.99 | +134.52 |
NASDAQ | 4292.06 | +4.48 |
*Disclaimer:
World One Consulting Pvt Ltd will not accept any liability for loss or damage as a result of reliance on the information contained within this newsletter including data, quotes, charts and buy/sell signals.
World One Consulting Pvt Ltd will not accept any liability for loss or damage as a result of reliance on the information contained within this newsletter including data, quotes, charts and buy/sell signals.