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Royal Enfield to explore new store formats

By Satarupa Chakraborty | March 30, 2018

Starting its retail identity in 2014 globally, Royal Enfield is re-inventing their retail formats with a robust dealership network and focusing on an expansion roadmap in tier-II and tier-III cities.

With 825 retail stores in India, the legendary motorcycle major Royal Enfield is carving a niche is aspirational and experiential retail spaces. Starting its retail identity in 2014 globally, Royal Enfield is re-inventing their retail formats with a robust dealership network and focusing on an expansion roadmap in tier-II and tier-III cities. Retail4growth speaks to Shankar “Shanx” Sundararaman, Head – Retail Excellence, Royal Enfield on building a strong, ajile and uniform retail network and experience.

What made Royal Enfield adopt a retail identity that is based on experience and not on displaying products?

If you look at the history of the brand and product,  the product with gear on the right side was a barrier itself until we changed it to the left side during 2008-2009. For a long time in the history of the brand, though the retail touch points and price were not accessible, the aspiration was always high. Therefore, when we created the global retail identity in 2014, aspiration and experiential part ruled in the concept.

You are breaking away with traditional retail design and experiences along with expanding network rapidly. How are you making that possible?

Though we follow a retail identity, we are always experimenting with formats. Equal proportions of our store number play with sale and services and at some flagship outlets, both are merged. As for the formats, we are welcoming all changes though we don’t have any set roadmap. Recently,  we have opened the biker’s café in Goa and we have involved museum experience, bike rentals etc at the outlet. We may open many such outlets or evolve further – we don’t know yet. For us, it’s not ROI anymore but strictly “experience”.

How difficult is it to work on dealership network and to ensure similar retail experiences nationwide? How are you countering the barriers?

Some of our dealers are even 4th generation one, so one thing is sure that we have brand loyalty not only from customer interface but also from our dealer network. We are constantly identifying which parts of value chain to empower along with investing in manpower enhancement. Concerted effort go into learning management that involves various facets like social and peer learning, AR-VP, gamifications etc. 25% of our stores today are achieving break-even only through service so we realize that service and hence manpower is our biggest asset.

 

 

 

 

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