The Liverpool family store is part of 50 such family stores being planned to be set up by the company by March, 2011. Twenty five of these 50 family stores are slated to come up in the next three months.

Apart from family stores, the retailer is also embarking on an aggressive plan to expand its present network of 500 Liverpool menswear stores located across 22 states of the country. While 70 of the 500 stores are located in the home state of Gujarat, the retailer is also having its presence outside India. It is currently operating a store each in the UAE and Nepal.

Liverpool has drawn up plans to set up 700 new menswear stores by March 2010. It will also set up another 300 stores by March 2011, thus, taking the tally of new stores to 1,000 in less than 18 months. The total network of menswear outlets after completion of expansion will thus rise to 1,500 stores.

The company is also diversifying into footwear retailing by opening a new exclusive footwear chain. This retail chain is planning to set up 25 footwear stores this year, while another 75 stores are expected to be added soon, thereby, taking the number of footwear stores to 100 in the coming months.

The company has earmarked a sum of Rs 200 crore to fund its expansion.

Liverpool is presently sourcing its requirement from third party manufacturers, however, to augment supplies, it has decided to also set up a garments manufacturing facility in Ahmedabad. The plant is expected to be ready for production by 2010-11.

The country’s largest retail group is already into sports segment as it operates a niche multi-brand sports retail chain under “Planet Sports” brand name.

Planet Sports, owned by Winner Sports Ltd — a wholly owned subsidiary of the group’s flagship retail arm Pantaloon Retail– currently operates a retail chain of 69 multi-brand, lifestyle, sports goods across the country.

“Planet Sports,” which currently acts as the distributor and marketing partner of global sports goods brands like Speedo, Wilson and Converse, in India is expecting to garner Rs 10 billion (Rs 1,000 crore) worth of annual business from this fast growing segment.

“We are looking at building up a big sports business. We believe the category of sports alone could be a Rs 1,000-crore business in the next 3-4 years,” said Kishore Biyani, Chief Executive Officer, Future Group to PTI.

“We are into a lot of interesting sports. We represent lot of brands in the country like Speedo and Converse. Sports are one category where we are working more,” added Biyani.

“We are opening up large stores. We opened a large store in Mumbai this month measuring 10,000 sq ft and now we are looking at even larger stores, may be of 20,000-25,000 sq ft,” told Biyani.

Winner Sports, according to media reports, is planning to open 40 new stores this year. While, most of these stores will offer a wide range of sports merchandise of reputed global brands like Speedo, Wilson, Prince, Spalding, Callaway, Puma, Reebok, Nike and Adidas, 15 of the 40 new stores will be exclusively offering ‘Converse’ brand of casual shoes for youth.

Hidesign, which has earlier entere into an agreement with Kishore Biyani-led Future group for launching a range of affordable leather accessories designed specifically to meet Indian needs, is planning to roll out these products under the brand name of Holii. The products are slated to be launched in the next month across major cities of the country.

According to Hidesign’s President Dilip Kapur, “Our new brand is completely a new concept and is very Indian in terms of its designs. We will be working closely with the Future Group, where they will provide expertise in retail and operations while we will be associated with brand building and design.”

Holii range of products will be across Pantaloon Retail’s department format stores located across all the major cities in the country.

As part of the agreement, Hidesign will sell its new range of products in The company will be introducing the new range in around 30 shop

Holii range of leather accessories is expected to garner a business of Rs 25 crore over a period of the next two years.

Apart from Holii, the company is also planning to unveil another collection of new accessories that has been designed by well known fashion designer Rohit Bal. Talking about this collection, the brand name of which is yet to be revealed, Kapur said, “The design will be Indian and will be out in the market by next month. This is the first time an Indian designer’s collection of our range will be sold in all the big cities outside India like Milan, New York.”

Apart from the company’s own exclusive stores, the new collection will be also be sold through 30-odd of Pantaloon and Shoppers’ Stops retail chains across the country.

Speaking about own stores, Kapoor said that the company will set up 12 exclusive stores this fiscal, of which 8 have already become operational. “We have already opened eight exclusive stores and will open 4 in the coming months,” said Kapur.

The premium accessories retailer currently operates 48 lifestyle stores across the country and is also present in 23 deveoped markets globally.

While, the Delhi-based home goods, value, retailer, which currently operates around 170 large format (mega) stores across the country, has closed some 12 non- performing stores and removed around 6,000 employees in the past few months to come out of its financial woes, it’s going to be a long and arduous journey for the company to restore confidence of its stakeholders including lenders, employees, vendors, and investors, among others.

According to a Live Mint report, the cash strapped retailer, which carries a debt burden of around Rs 730 crore, has now begun to even offer the company’s equity shares in lieu of outstanding payments to its vendors.

While, asserting that “nothing of this sort is happening” the company Chairman has, however, conceded to the newspaper “… If any supplier is interested in having stake in the company while having faith in its future, then we would welcome them to be our stakeholders as this will bring in more sense of belongingness, which will only benefit us in the long run.”

Agreeing that “cash flow is under stress” Agrawal has also confirmed that “the worst is not over yet.” According to him, “The company is gradually moving towards normalcy and lot more is being done before we say that the worst is over.”

Despite several measures undertaken by the company to stem the rot, including freeze on further expansion, situation continues to remain grim. “In the present situation, very few suppliers will give credit to the company,” said an erstwhile apparel vendor of the company.

Vishal Retail, it may be recalled, was once a darling of equity investors. They had lapped up the company’s Rs 10 equity shares at a premium of Rs 270 each in the IPO during the boom days for retail sector in July 2007. The IPO was oversubscribed 81 times. The equity share, which once touched the dizzy heights of Rs 1001, is currently selling at around Rs 60 each.

The business, which was badly affected due to decline in demand as a consequence of global economic downturn, resulted in closure of over 100 stores in the last 12 or so months across the country. Apart from draining resources, these under performing stores were incurring huge expenses on salaries and rentals, resulting in non-viable operations.

The days of closing down of store are now behind the company and it has again begun to expand its retail network, though cautiously.

“The period of shut downs is now over. We have opened five large format stores during past three months and all have reported sales more than double the normal sales rate. So we are optimistic about revival,”  said SanjivGoenk, Vice Chairman of the Company, while speaking to reporters in New Delhi.

Although, the sales are showing signs of revival, they are still not enough to take the company “out of woods,” said Goenka. While, the company has recorded growth of 18 per cent in the same-store-sales, in the last 3 months, however, there is still a need for them to grow further. The costs should also come down substantially to make the operations profitable.

“Rentals are still very high despite dropping by an average 20 per cent or so,” said Goenka (ET report). The company has so far been able to prune rental costs by 12 per cent, according to Goenka.

Spencer’s is looking at breaking even its operations at store level within the next 6 month, while the break even at the company level, according to the report, is expected within a period of the next 12 months.

Under the circumstances, the company is cautious on expanding its network. While, the retailer has opened 5 new stores in the last 3 months, it is planning to set up another 10 during the financial year, at an investment of Rs 100 crore.

In order to raise further resources, Spencer’s is looking at diluting 10 per cent of its equity in favour of private investors. It is believed to have already begun talking with a few investors in this regard. The company will look at raising equity through IPO only after it achieve break-even. Spencer’s is also exploring induction of a multi-national retail player partner to sore up its back-end operations. The tie-up could be lines of Bharti-Walmart joint venture.

Founded 19 years ago on the 27th October, 1991 with the unveiling of its first men’swear store in Andheri, Shoppers’ Stop, is owned by leading hospitality and real estate player K Raheja group. Shoppers Stop is among the country’s pioneering and leading organised retailing company that currently operates several multi-format lifestyle retail chains, across the country.

Nagesh’s movement from an ‘executive’ position to a ‘non-executive’ position is part of succession planning of retail business within the group. Nagesh, who has been working for 19 years with the group, is looking forward to spending part of his time on personal and social interests.

According to the new organisational restructure, while Nagesh will continue to remain on the company’s Board of Directors (now, as non-executive director), he will also play the role of a strategic advisor to the management. Nagesh will also be guiding the management team as its mentor. Nagesh will also continue to hold the currently held positions of chairman and vice chairman respectively in Crossword Bookstores Ltd. and Hypercity Retail (India) Ltd- both part of the group’s retail business.

In the new organisation structure, Govind Shrikhande, who is currently working as chief executive of the company, will also rise to become President and CEO, of the company. This position is currently held by Nagesh.

Apart from being an exercise in succession planning, the process of restructuring the organisation, according to Nagesh, will nurture talents to run the company as well as ensure that there are CEOs and MDs in the making for the group.

Shoppers Stop– professionally managed company– has Chandru L Raheja, as its chairman and his sons Ravi C Raheja and Neel C Raheja as its Directors on its board.

Van Heusen, the leading formal wear apparel brand mainly catering to the needs of men, is looking at adding new stores across the country to aggressively expand its business.

Van Heusen, a leading global shirts brand of Phillips-Van Heusen Corporation– a Dutch fashion powerhouse–has been perpetually licenced for India to Madura Garments Lifestyle & Retail, a leading lifestyle apparel company of Kumar Mangalam Birla-led Aditya Birla Group.

Apart from Van Heusen, Madura Garments has revolutionised the country’s readymade apparel and retail business through brands like Louise Philippe, Allen Solly, and Espirit. The group also operates several other apparel businesses including Peter England Fashions & Retail and the Collective.

Van Heusen is planning to increase its retail network by 40 per cent this year, as it gets ready to set up 25 new stores to its existing network of 65 stores. Apart from flagship format, Van Heusen, caters to clothing and fashion needs of men, women, and youngsters through exclusive formats, including “V Dot” for gen-next.

Apart from offering lifestyle formal wear for men, women and youngsters, the brand, according to a Business Line report, will be adding new product lines for all occasions and also introducing a new range of fashion accessories.

“We are getting future-ready by turning ourselves into a complete lifestyle brand. This means we will be retailing not just formal wear but also introduce denims, club wear, accessories and innerwear at our outlets,” Mr Shitalkumar Mehta, COO, Van Heusen.

The company’s womenswear business, which was added a few months ago, is doing quite well. “At least 10 per cent of our turnover comes from the womenswear,” said Mehta. Van Heusen is also introducing a super premium menswear range called ‘Heritage’ by September, 2009. In this range, while the shirts will be priced at around Rs 4,000, the suits will be offered at Rs 35,000 and above.

As a part of promotional exercise, the leading lifestyle fashion brand will also organise a has Men’s Fashion Week. For this purpose, the company has entered into an agreement with the Fashion Design Council of India.

The brand has also chalked out an aggressive plan for marketing its products. It plans to spend Rs 20 crore, or roughly 5 percent of targeted turnover of Rs 400 crore, on such activities this year.

Apart from experiencing falling footfalls and declining basket size (average invoice value) due to global slowdown, the highly leveraged retail chain was facing the problems of high interest cost and paying heavy payroll expenses.

On both the counts, the company, according to a BS report, appears to have succeeded. Vishal has been able to bring down the number of employees by a whopping 45 per cent from nearly 16,000 a year ago to 8,500 now. The company has also been able to address the problem of high interest cost by bringing it down from Rs 10 crore a month earlier to Rs 7.25 crore a month now. The interest cost has mostly come down due to negotiaon of interest rates with the lenders. Against a high rate of 15 per cent per annum the rate has now come down to 9.75 per cent. What is most worrying, however, is the fact that the company continues to carry a high debt burden of Rs 730 crore at an extremely debt/ equity ratio of 1.7.

“We have told the bankers that ours is a profit-making business model. All we need is some leniency in the rate of interest, so that we could make a comeback,” said Ambeek Khemka, group president.

Unless the company resorts to further dilution of some of its investments in assets, or inducts fresh equity capital in the system, it will be extremely difficult for the retailer to improve upon its leveraged position.

One of the major reasons for highly leveraged position of Vishal Retail could be attributed to the policy of going in for ‘unbridled expansion’ of its retail network. At one point of time, the number of its stores had crossed 184 while the space occupied by these stores had almost touched three million sq ft.

Most of the Vishal’s expansion like many other fast growing retailers (like Subhiksha) was funded via short term funds in the hope that fresh infusion of capital will help replace these high cost, low maturity funds.

The sudden plummeting of equity markets, however, led to a situation in which there was a sudden evaporation of capital from the markets. Even the plan for dilution of promoters’ equity stake could not fructify as most of the potential buyers themselves were struggling for raising funds and at the same time pruning their own operations.

“Excess short-term debt, coupled with plans of equity fund raising falling apart owing to poor market sentiments, led to sub-optimum capital mix and increased interest burden,” said Khemka.

Vishal Retail, which has now begun to clock over Rs 100 crore in monthly sales, is looking at closing down 20-odd stores to further rationalise its business. It is also looking at optimising employee expenses by cutting down on travel and communication allowances, particularly that of the top management, including the president.

“We are looking at increasing our per-employee productivity and this is one step in that direction,” Khemka added.

The new HyperCITY outlet spread over 100,000 sq ft of trading space located in InOrbit Mall boasts of wide aisles and 20 checkout counters. The store was launched on Friday, the 31st July, 2009.

“We are delighted to launch HyperCITY in Hyderabad. It is our first store in in the city and we are confident that HyperCITY will prove popular with shoppers. We have seen immense potential in this city and therefore believe it to be the perfect market to establish our store. HyperCITY will provide shoppers a truly international shopping experience, where customers can shop in comfort in a large, modern and exciting environment,” said B S Nagesh, vice-chairman, Hypercity Retail (I) Pvt Ltd, on the occasion.

“We expect revenues of Rs 1,000 crore by the next year once four more stores are commissioned by June 2010,” added Nagesh. Offering details of present operations of the retail chain Nagesh said, “the Malad (Mumbai) store alone had registered revenues of Rs 175 crore, the Vashi store Rs 90 crore and Jaipur store close to Rs 75 crore. With Hyderabad, we are confident of doing about Rs 100-crore business.”

Speaking about expansion plans, Nagesh said, “While the economic downturn has affected retailers in the country, we have not swayed away from the ongoing expansion plans. Four properties are at the advanced stage of being inaugurated. The first off the block will be one at Amritsar, followed by another one at Mumbai with Bangalore and Pune next in line,” he said. The company is expected to achieve break-even after the opening of its seventh store at Bangalore.

The HyperCity Hyderabad like its counterparts in Mumbai and Jaipur offers a wide array of over 44,000 products under fresh, food and grocery, home entertainment, technical appliances, furniture, sports, toys, fashion accessories and footwear categories. These products are being sourced from vendors located in India and abroad. HyperCITY is also looking at setting up laundry, pharmacy, bakery, ATM, and other services at the mall.

InOrbit Mall is a real-estate venture of Mumbai-based construction major K Raheja group, which owns HyperCity Retail India. The retailing company is also partly owned by leading department store format retailer Shoppers Stop.

Speaking on the occasion, B S Nagesh, said that the group is looking at opening 10 such hypermarket format stores across India by 2011. Each new store will entail an investment outlay of Rs 30 crore each.

The new store of Zedds, spread over 1,500 sq ft area, showcases an exclusive range of over 200 formals to casuals and ethnic to party wear products.

“In order to set a new definition of fashion and style and meet the ever growing demand of our products we have set up this second store in Hyderabad. The new store opening is a part of our National Expansion & Brand retailing strategy. Zedds is looking at rapid growth of the brand across India. We have plans to reach the total count of 10 EBOs (Exclusive Business Outlets) by 2010 with traces in Metros, state capitals and tier-2 cities following a mix of company owned, franchisee or a store in store format. We have made strategic awareness about our brand in Mumbai with Zedds Kiosks at PVR & Cinemax and plan to open a standalone store in Mumbai soon,” said Rajesh Rawtani, Director, on the occasion of opening of the new store.

“With contemporary designs, beautiful textures and interesting sizes, Stilletoes, Meule and Thongs Flip Flop are some of the hottest products that Zedds has ever offered,” added Rawtani.

Apart from Hyderabad, Zedds is going to target high potential areas of the country in the coming months. It is ready to expand into Mumbai and Indore in the next quarter.

Founded 15 years ago in 1994, Zedds  is acclaimed for its “contemporary styling,’ and has always been known as a ‘design ahead’ brand.

The fast growing brand attributes success to its ability of understanding the desires of its target audience, and offering them something unparalleled to satisfy their quest of ‘individual style statements’. Many of Zedds’ shoes include comfort features, like quilted lining and shock-absorbing padding. Technology, Design and Quality are three guiding principles of the brand. Zedds claims to be the first and only home brand that offers Shoes of any size.

The company, which markets its products, among others, under Koutons, Charlie Outlaw, Les Femme, Koutons Junior, K2ONE, FeeMe brands is looking at increasing the number of its stores from over 1,420 to 2,000, by the end of this financial year (31st March, 2010).

The company, which unlike many of its counterparts, operates with comfortable leverage is looking at expanding the network through additional debt. Since, Koutons prefers franchise model for expansion, it does not require much capital to expand its network. As such, it will raise capital through equity dilution only when it becomes necessary to do so.

Koutons is also trying to restrict expansion of its outlets as it wants to focus on converting existing stores into ‘family’ stores where all product categories (apparel, accessories, and footwear) are available under one roof. It will, therefore, consider increasing the size of some of its stores than to open new stores.

Koutons has also put its overseas expansion plans on hold until it is able to consolidate its position in the local market.

Koutons has in the past won several awards, including “Best Retailer Leadership Award 2008,” “Most Admired Fashion group,” “Value Retailer of the Year,” “Chain Store of the Year,” among others, while its Chairman DPS Kohli has won the “Most Admired Fashion Face of the year,” and “Brand Entrepreneur of the Year” awards.

Planet Retail Holdings Pvt. Ltd., a joint venture between Kishore Biyani  (49 per cent) and V N Sharma (an Indonesian resident of Indian origin), operates several retail chains in lifestyle segment for products covered under fashion and sports categories. While, the JV operates Planet Sports, Sports Warehouse and The Athlete’s Foot under sports segment, it operates Guess, Next and Women’s Secret, among others, in fashion segment. The company had recently ventured into beauty segment with the launch of The Body Shop stores in India. Prior to Mark & Spencer’s tieup with Reliance, Planet Retail was also operating 14 stores of the UK-based iconic fashion and homeware brand in India.

According to Kishore Biyani, Planet Retail JV had to be terminated because Pantaloon is already in a sports business, which has now become a wholly owned subsidiary of Pantaloon.

Blue Food, on the other hand, operates several restaurant chains under brand names of Bombay Blue, Noodle Bar and Copper Chimney, among others. The JV with Blue Foods, operating under the name of Pan India Food Solutions, had to be terminated because Blue Foods has already merged into a different entity.

According to Sunil Kapur, chief executive officer of Blue Foods, no operational or management changea are envisaged as a consequence of termination of the JV. It may be recalled that Indivision Capital, a private equity (PE) firm, had agreed to invest Rs 100 crore in Blue Foods in October 2008.

The Rahejas-led Shoppers’ Stop is among the country’s pioneering and leading listed retailers. It operates a flagship retail chain under its own name of department format stores across India. Soppers Stop operates Mothercare store in the country under an exclusive franchise agreement signed with the UK-based retailer in August, 2005.

While, standalone Mothercare stores in India ocuppy between 3,000 and 6,000 sq ft of space, the shop-in-shop outlets, which are located inside Shoppers Stop stores occupy an average of 2,000 sq ft in space.

Mothercare has a vision of becoming the country’s number 1 retailer of mother’s to be & baby products in its target segment. It sources 70 per cent of its product requirements in India from global vendors.

Mothercare, the £723 million retailer operating over 1,000 stores across 50 countries of the world, according to reports, is reported to be unhappy with performance of its stores operated by Shoppers Stop in India. The UK-based retailer, according to unconfirmed reports, is believed to have already commenced talks with Trent Limited, a Noel Tata headed retail arm of Tata group, for a possible tieup with the latter. Trent currently operates three retail chains under Westside, Star Bazaar, and Landmark brand names.

In fact, there is not much difference the retail formats operated by the two companies. Westside, the flagship brand of the retail is a lifestyle chain of department store format stores similar to Shoppers Stop’s flagship chain. Both of these draw a large part of their revenues from lifestyle fashion and homeware products and focus on private labels. Star Bazaar is a hypermarket value chain that mainly deals in food, grocery, fresh foods, apparel, and fast moving consumer products. Shoppers’ Stop has a sister retailer in hypermarmarket space called HyperCity. Landmark, on the other hand is a books and leisure products (music, games, toys, stationery) retail chain similar to Shoppers’ Stop’s ‘Crossword’ retail chain.

While, Shoppers’ Stop has several franchise and licensing arrangements with iconic European retail brands, Trent has recently tied up with Tesco, the world’s third largest UK-based food and grocery retailer, to set up a chain of 50 hypermarket stores. Of course, Tesco will provide only back-end and technical services as still no foreign investment is allowed in India in multi-brand retail.

The equity shareholders of Vishal Retail Ltd, the company which owns the retail chain, in the Extra Ordinary General Meeting (EGM) of the Company held on June 27, 2009, have passed a Special Resolution that authorises the company to issue and allot, in one or more trenches, upto 75,00,000 (Seventy Five Lacs) warrants on a preferential basis to Ram Chandra Agarwal, CMD of the Company. Agarwal also happens to be the founder and promoter of the company.

At the peak of the cash crunch, the retailer was said to be in talks with Reliance Retail, among others, for sale of equity by way of dilution of promoters’ equity in the company.

The company has proposed to pay aggregate annual compensations of Rs 4 crore (around $800,000) to B S Nagesh and of Rs 3 crore (around $600,000) to Govind Shrikhande.

B S Nagesh, who has been reappointed as Managing Director of the company from April 1, 2009 to March 31, 2010, according to the proposal, if approved, will get an annual salary and performance-linked incentive/reward or bonus of Rs 4 crore, while Govind Shrikhande, who has been reappointed as whole-time director and designated as ‘Executive Director and Chief Executive Officer’ of the company for three years from July 29, 2009 will get an annual salary and performance-linked incentive/reward or bonus of Rs 3 crore.

Interestingly, the approval of the shareholders for increased compensation is being sought by the company at a time when on the one hand the retail sector as a consequence of economic downturn is reeling under severe pressure, and Shoppers Stop itself has reported a loss of Rs 64 crore in the financial year 2008-09 on the other. Instead of showing growth, the company, which witnessed a decline of 15 per cent in footfalls during the last quarter fiscal 2009 (ended March 31, 2009), has reported a loss of 3 per cent in ’same store sales’ for the quarter.

Shoppers Stop, which began operations in October, 1991 from its first store in Andheri Mumbai, apart from the flagship retail chain under the same brand name, also operates several other speciality retail businesses. Home Stop, Crossword, Mothercare, MAC, Clinique & Estee Lauder, among others, are the speciality retail chains operated by the company either on its own or in partnership/ licensing/ franchise arrangements with global brands/ retailers. Despite several firsts to its credit, the company has not been able to scale up its operations at the same pace as some of its competitors like Pantaloon Retail of Future Group. Against over 12 million sq ft space of Future group, Shoppers Stop is still occupying below two million sq ft. of retail space.

Shopper Stop also has financial and management interest in ‘HyperCity’ hypermarket format retail chain owned by the group. The group has recently closed down the operations of ‘Brio’ (F&B), Desi Cafe (F&B), and ‘Argos’ (Catalogue Retail) retail chains.

The retailer handles a rich portfolio of over 400 local and international lifestyle brands under several product categories that among others include fashion (apparel and accessories), personal care (beauty care including skin care), home and travel ware (home decor, kitchenware, appliances, luggage), food, grocery, and gifts.

While, Life, Kashish, Vettorio Frantini, Elliza Donatein, Haute Curry, i Jeans Wear, Insense, Mario Zegnoti, Acropolis, Indi-Visual and Push & Shov, are some of the private lifestyle labels, MAC, Lancome, Chanel, Clinique, Tommy Hilfiger, Esprit and Frich Connection, among others, are the global brands that are sold by the retailer at its stores.

The retailer is currently operating 27 department format stores under the flagship Shoppers Stop brand, while it is also operating 51 stores of ‘Crossword’ chain and 22 stores of ‘Mothercare’ brand.