India’s tier two markets are beckoning retailers with growing aspirational levels and opportunities. Leveraging this are retail brands like Cantabil Retail, which is fast charting its expansion plans across both tier 1 and tier 2 markets. 

In fact, when the apparel manufacturer and retailer announced its fourth quarter financial results for FY 2022-’23 in March this year, it attributed its revenue growth and strong financial performance to the introduction of new stores. The company opened 69 (net) new exclusive retail stores during the financial year 2022-23 and these have been across 14 different states, including Assam, Bihar, Gujrat, Haryana, Himachal Pradesh, J&K, Madhya Pradesh, Maharashtra, Punjab, Rajasthan, Uttar Pradesh, Uttarakhand, West Bengal and Nagaland. 

Cantabil recently launched a new store in Dehradun, its fifth in the city, with a new look which will be replicated across all its new stores. The re-modeled store covering an area of 3400 sqft, took the company’s total store count in the country to 461. This store was in fact positioned by the company as the “future of retail experience for customers”. 

Speaking about it to Retail4Growth in an exclusive conversation, Deepak Bansal, Director, Cantabil Retail India Ltd, says, “We changed the whole look and feel of the new store in Dehra Dun because we realised many of our competitors had just copied and replicated our store interior aesthetics. So in places where they happened to launch their stores before us, it looked like we had copied them!  We then decided it was time to change our store interior and design.”

With white and grey forming the main aesthetic theme, Cantabil’s new store interiors also feature new fixtures and lighting. Explaining the key elements that enhanced the store’s new look, Deepak says, “Our previous look was predominantly yellow in nature with mainly rubber wood shelves. But now we have chosen white and grey as the theme, and this is the overall tone that a customer experiences when he enters the new store. The new store is also brighter.” 

Obviously multiple elements go into rendering a new experience in the store, with fixtures being a primary ingredient.  Fixtures in fact have a tangible effect on the customer’s shopping experience. Explaining the new look of the fixtures in the new store, Deepak says, “The new store has adjustable fixtures with Grey Mica in the back, pink gold chrome on the edges of the panelling and concealed lighting at the back. We have also introduced nestingtables and have redesigned the cash counters.”

Reaping ROI from store spends

Deepak informs that the new fixtures are 25% more costly, and this points to the company’s increasing focus on such experiential elements in the store. “On an average the spends on these store solutions will definitely go up by about 15-20%,” he says.  He further elaborates on the brand’s journey with its in-store elements and how investments in these make a difference to the brand, “Cantabil is an old brand, which.was started in 2000. During the course of our journey we have changed our interiors and saw the results. Our stores had a certain look till the year 2013. in 2014 we went in for a complete revamp of the store and we noticed that when we changed the look, there was also a big change in the sales. We started getting even better numbers and we were confident that investment in interiors always gives you the returns. So we changed our interiors again in 2018. It has been five years now and we felt the time was right for the next change.”

Suppliers and manufacturers of store solutions like fixtures are a vital part of a retail brand’s design and redesign plans. Speaking about Cantabil’s approach to finding the right fixture suppliers, Deepak says, “We mainly look at their credentials - they should have been working in the industry for many years. And of course their manufacturing set-up is the other important factor which we consider.”

Addressing challenges

With a good supplier partner in place, some key challenges are taken care of for an expanding retail brand, though there are other challenges too. As Deepak says, “Getting the right location, at the right price is the key challenge we face when it comes to expansion and roll-out. The other challenge is manpower acquisition, especially in smaller markets.”

Expanding scale

But these challenges aside, Cantabil’s expansion spree continues, not only in terms of the number of stores, but also in terms of the store size. As Deepak sums up, “Earlier our average store space was 1100 sq ft, but now it is 1200 sq ft and it will go up further in the future, because we are now taking bigger spaces even in smaller towns.We have also planned to open 80 new stores this financial year.”