The
biggest challenge for most of us in our lives, especially for Startup
Entrepreneurs is to learn from our past. We have all heard that it is perfectly
fine for us to make mistakes. In fact, in my formative years as a Retail
Professional when I worked at Pantaloon Retail (now The Future Group), there
used to be posters in our office that it was “Ok” to make mistakes as long as
you don’t repeat them and of course, one learns from them. Indeed I have made a
number of mistakes in my Retail Career spanning 20 years but my specialty has
been that I have gotten up back every single time after faltering with some
amazing learning. And that’s what this article is all about.
It’s
been in my mind to set-up my own Retail venture as an option for
Entrepreneurship for some time now. From Education to Food to Tech to Product
Retail, we (my wife & I) dabbled for a long time on which segment to
choose. My only criteria, having signed up 140 cafes for Café Coffee Day and
160 Dealership Outlets for Royal Enfield (both of them all India) – I was
General Manager – Business Development at both companies - was that the
business I was about to build should be Scalable, Saleable and Profitable.
Among
many other options that we finalized was the one retailing baby products –
which is perhaps the only category other than food that has a potential sale
365 days a year and is almost price inelastic so to say. And that’s how my
first startup venture Smiling Baby was conceptualized way back in 2013. While
the business model was completely fool proof and continues to remain so even
after 4 years, there have a few shortcomings as well. I took each of those
lessons with grace and have become a much better Entrepreneur over the past 36
months.
Now
as we enter in to our second phase, Smiling
Baby 2.0 as I call, there a few learning that I have already
implemented. I spoke about these initiatives at the recently held ReTechCon2017 at Mumbai, organized by Retailers Association of India, the industry body
that represents Retailers of all sizes.
Among
other things, the first thing that we have implemented is a truly
“omni-channel” retail model. We already have one store in Chennai and are
setting up two more in Coimbatore shortly. All the existing and future stores
are connected together on the backend with the Retail store and a website (+
Apps) in the front-end. When a customer visits a store and looks for a product
which may not be physically at the store but is still available on the
website/app, she will still be able to order the item and it gets picked up and
delivered to her from some other store where they may have it in stock. And all
this within less than 24 hours from the time of ordering! E-Commerce, as a
habit for shopping is getting better by the day in India and that’s been my
biggest learning in my journey.
That Amazon has purchased Whole Foods
strengthens my model of Omni-channel because that’s precisely what Retail in
the 21st century is going to be. Customers need a product right there when they
need it. While the e-commerce warehouses will continue to remain, it is all
about effectively utilizing the retail store fronts which we have all built. The
power of leverage is immense and we at Smiling Baby would stand testimony for
the same. Watch this space.