DDS.Small Retail

Innovation in Indian Local Markets -By Arti, Ashwini, Melonnie, Richa, Sushmita and Swati For centuries, bazaars of India have been the signature of Indian life and culture. Crowded, noisy, cheap and buzzing with activity, the local retail markets of India continue to be the backbone of the lower and middle class population. With the advent of big players in retail sector, the local markets in India have undergone a radical change. In order to survive the competition and yet maintain the low pricing attraction, retailers have to come up with innovative ideas.

As we walked around we began noticing these little aspects of innovation, in the way the shopkeepers stacked up their stock, in the way they displayed their goods or simply in the way they maintained a mobile(moving) store.

In this article, we visited one such market Shivajinagar bursting with innovation at every shop there. From marketing to display to plain publicity, innovation is everywhere to be found.

The retail business boom in Bangalore over the last few years, lead us to believe that the small timers/local markets would not stand a chance against the mighty malls.However our visit to Shivajingar proved us wrong. From the tiniest of pan shops, to cosmetics and truck tyres, you could find just about anything in this place.The word "visual merchandizing" takes a very different meaning in Shivajinagr. There were no fancy lighting setups, no fancy interiors and some of them don't even have a sheltered place to sell their goods.This made us wonder as to what makes this place tick? How do these retailers manage to attract these large crowds without quite having any kind of brand image or visual appeal?

For Example we saw a small flower shop outside a temple. He was using truck/bus tyres stacked over as a stand, covered by a discarded flex sheet of some banner. He just needs to get that sheet and flowers.

These local markets play an important role in every lower middle class family. Right from the groceries of the house to the furniture of the house comes from this market. The smaller shops of these markets like a hardware shop, grocery shop, flower shop, stationary shop and so on still have to cope up with the limited funds and yet fulfill their needs of displaying their stuff innovatively. Lets see some more innovative examples from these innovative people.

The Bicycle, as we know it, is the most eco friendly and affordable means of transport. It also gives the user a lot of flexibility of trying something new with its form. We have seen bicycles working as dynamo to generate small amount of power to bicycles been used as knife sharpener. In Shivajinagar market we saw bicycles used as makeshift shops. These shops were a brilliant piece of innovation.

They need not wait for the customer to come to them, they go where the customers are most likely to be. For eg. We found the pineapple shop and the chat shops near the crossroads and the bus stop. Later in the day, when their stuff is sold out, they can use the same bicycles as transport to go home

We also saw a bicycle loaded with bags of small plastic toys and other utility items. It was so full that there was no space for them to ride it. The shop owner told us that he doesn’t ride it! While going home, he locks and leaves the bicycle near a tree. Apparently many shopkeepers like him follow the same. When asked if he isn’t scared of theft, he just smiled and nodded saying no. It’s just mutual trust in the market!

We were amazed at smart use of scooter by a small blanket and carpet shop owner. He had kept the brightly coloured carpets on his scooter. It served two purposes; as an advertisement – it acts as a marker for the shop which nobody can overlook! ; it also acts as a cover for his scooter standing on the dusty road.

A shopkeeper with his own thela built using bicycle wheels and scrap pieces of wood and iron. He proudly talks about how over the time he improvised for his mobile chat shop. There are tiny partitions for keeping all the required items and containers in place.

shop gives a isolated space only for the phone, but not good enough for this shop owner. Here the shop owner decided to make his own stand for the phone using his old waste. He has used the metallic holder of a old used tyre and has fixed a long enough metal rod into it which holds the phone. Now this gives a good visibilty to the phone which surely increases his income through the phone. Also he has made sure that the height of the phone matches the need of a adult customer.

In another case, a shopkeeper had built his own thela using bicycle wheels and scrap pieces of wood and iron. He proudly talked about how over the time he improvised for his mobile chat shop. There are tiny partitions for keeping all the required items and containers in place.

The design of the public telephone may be very suitable for a higher end shop where the

The local markets have abundant number of temporary shops/exhibitions. These exhibitions are put up for a small period of time in a rented place and offer attractive sales and extremely low prices to the crowd of the local markets. As they accomodate their display in new place after every few days, they come up with varied ideas to arrange their goods. The rate cards, banners, pamphlets etc remain the same but they need to figure out ways to display them everytime. In the above picture the shopkeeper has use small pieces of cloth and strings to make a rope to hang his rate cards.

Even as more and more corporates are joining the retail sector, the competition to woo the customers is also mounting up. The major challenge that the unorganized retail markets today face is to retain their customers without putting into too much of an extra cost. Innovations like ‘a mobile kirana shop on a bicycle’ or ‘a clothes hanger for displaying pouches’ may have been done just out of need, but if taken to the next level, retailers hold a lot of untapped potential in creating innovative ideas and design solutions.