In the recent times, it has been observed that speciality retail across India is expanding at a rapid pace and will have an astounding growth in future. Leaders of the Indian and International market have their eyes on the Indian market for encashing speciality stores retail explosion. There are various formats of retail, among which only speciality retail will thrive in India. Every year speciality retail market is mounting organically at an estimated rate of 15-20%. The growth of speciality retailing is viewed as sustainable. In a developing country like India, this market is rising speedily.
Integration- A principal need
The major challenge that the speciality retailers encounter is the assimilation between back-office operations and store. The foremost reason for facing such issue is they do not have complete integration between back-office systems that includes finance and warehousing and point of sale which is the front store. They are mainly focussed on getting a wide range of stock, conversant staff and offering proper information and advice which customers expect from speciality stores. The same level of attention they do not give to the backend operation, to be precise, on assimilation of sales systems with operational and financial data. The operational and finance data are essential business indicators, but the speciality retailers lack visibility here. If attention is given to these two sets of data, then it would help the speciality retailers to adopt better business strategies for flourishing in business, reducing costs and streamlining.
Benefits of assimilation
There are several benefits of assimilation. The benefits are as follows:
Economic validation for speciality retailing
It is indeed effortless to become a retailer. No big investment in production is required. Purchase of merchandise can be done on credit; space for store can be taken on lease with zero down payments. The business can be carried out only by developing a professional website at a nominal price. It is not surprising in the present scenario that a huge number of speciality retail stores are running successfully across India.
Services given by speciality retailers
Specialization and expertise
One of the primary benefits of speciality store is, they solely focus on particular class of products. It gives an opportunity to the owners as well as the employees in developing expertise and gain knowledge within the speciality products of the store. It has been seen that a speciality store can indeed carry huge number of goods of chosen category that pulls enthusiast shoppers which they fail to obtain from a general retailer. Speciality stores are a huge crowd puller provided the owners arrange product demostrations and special events.
The bottomline
In the age of digitalization, speciality retailers are indeed struggling hard to keep pace with the chaning requirement of the consumers and varying speed of technological innovation. With unified commerce, speciality retailers can mix physical and digital for providing shoppers with faultless, enhanced and personalized shopping experience. To enter into speciality retailing, is indeed easy but failing is much easier. To carry on retailing, a firm should do a suitable job, the primary role being catering to the need of the consumers.