Saturday, December 20, 2008

Slowdown Forces RIL To Revamp Retail Formats - Dec 20, 2008

Mukesh Ambani is going back to the drawing board once again two years after opening its first retail store ''Reliance Fresh'' in November 2006. There would be three main business units, value, lifestyle and joint ventures.

The value retailing will have formats like Reliance Fresh, Reliance Super and Reliance Mart under it. In the meantime, lifestyle will consist retailing formats such as Reliance Digital, Reliance Trends, Reliance Wellness, Reliance Footprint and Reliance Jewels.

The joint ventures will have tie-up businesses with Hamleys for toys, Marks & Spencer for apparel and Pearl Europe for optical retailing. Nevertheless, all these formats will still sport their current brand identity and the back-end operations will be one for each business unit.

This may result in job losses as many as 800 employees, including most of the expats were asked to resign in the last two weeks. Way back in 2006, during the company''s annual general meeting, Chairman Mukesh Ambani had said Reliance will hire over five lakh employees and spend Rs 10000 crore for its retail venture. Industry experts expect the gross margins to improve by two-three per cent and even the supply costs to reduce by as much as 40 per cent after the consolidation.

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