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| Lack of choice at affordable prices
inspires ‘The Loot’ |
| November 03, 2009 (India) |
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 ‘The
Loot’, India’s largest multi brand discount store has added yet another feather
to its cap by achieving the milestone of setting up 100 franchisee showrooms
and in the process, also reached a store count of 140 outlets and is well on
its way to achieving its targeted objective of setting up 200 stores by March
2010.
At a time when most other apparel retailers were scaling down expansion plans
or downsizing their store count and operations, ‘The Loot’ was one of the few
which never looked back and kept its expansion plans intact. It has scaled up
its store strength from just 75 outlets in June 2009 to 140 in November.
At the start of the year, ‘The Loot’ bagged 5 major awards for its excellence
in the retail world and is known to be a true-blue example of entrepreneurship.
Keeping with the winning spree, ‘The Loot; was recently felicitated with the
prestigious TiE & Lumis Partners Entrepreneurial Excellence Award.
Fibre2fashion spoke exclusively to Mr Jay Gupta, Managing Director and the
visionary behind the success story of the ‘The Loot” and asked him to share
with us and our readers the challenges, tribulations and the strategy employed
to reach the 140 store milestone from the day he conceptualized "The Loot".
He said, “The love for business started very early in life for me and it was
during my early years in DR Graham’s School (Kalimpong-Darjeeling) that I
revealed my interest in business as I always wanted to start my own business
and succeed in it. In 1996, post my graduation from S.I.E.S. College in Mumbai;
I started my pursuit of setting up a thriving business.
“It was a known factor to me that garments and footwear was the business I
wanted to venture into and in 1996, I stumbled upon an article in a magazine
which stated – Chain of Hotels, Banks and Retail as ever growing profitable
businesses, so I opted for retail initially so that I could to get into the
garment and footwear business.
“To start the journey, I started franchisee stores for brands like Colour Plus,
Adidas, Nike, Weekender, Provogue etc. but soon realized that I wasn’t going to
be able to give the best to the customers and during this period a lot of
consumers complained about lack of choice at affordable prices as customers
wanted to buy inspirational brands at affordable prices.
“That is when I realized what needed to be done in order to run a successful
business. I wanted to bridge the gap in-between consumers’ want for brands and
unwillingness to pay for it and that’s when I opened my first ‘The Loot’ store
– a store that had the best brands in the country at real low costs, all under
one roof.
“Initially not many brands wanted to be a part of ‘The Loot’ due to the
concept, but later on when brands started seeing the success of my concept they
started approaching us directly and ‘The Loot’ can thus be considered as the
pioneer of multi branded discount stores in the country. At any given point of
time a consumer can find a discount of minimum 25% and a maximum of 60% at the
store.
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