No specific marketing strategy to promote EOSS: Shital Mehta, CEO, Pantaloons Fashion & Retail

In a candid chat, Shital Mehta, Chief Executive Officer, Pantaloons Fashion & Retail Ltd spills the beans about how Pantaloon has fared this season in End of Season Sale (EOSS) .

End of Season Sale (EOSS) has been a hit sales strategy among retailers. Is it a liquidation process or genuine revenue earning strategy?

This is a very good strategy to liquidate inventory and to reach to wider segment of consumers. With the help of this EOSS, consumers might just have started to shop in better store experience and in real low prices. Consumers expect discount throughout the year. Also this is fact that now a days, people don’t wait for the discount season to come because, for some consumers, shopping during the discount season is uncomfortable as it brings lot of rush and they feel the quality of merchandise is inferior to the normal quality merchandise. This is a sign of evolving market unlike North American market where they have a discounted market altogether. In nutshell, EOSS is win-win for consumers and retailers.  

For Pantaloon this season, EOSS has achieved double digit growth but we won’t be able to share numbers on the same. However, this is a very season for us. Last year it was not that great but this time we could cover the loss.

What it was a couple of years back and what’s the picture now in terms of consumer purchase trend, money spent per household etc?

EOSS is good for some segment of consumers but overall consumers look at good shopping experience and good product. I have seen people buying fresh merchandise when coming in a sales period and that sale percentage grows to 30-40 per cent from fresh merchandise. My observation is that people shop in the first two weeks of the sales, after that they upgrade buying from fresh arrivals.

Since couple of years, retailers are extending the EOSS sales period from 4 weeks to 7-8 weeks, why so?

4-5 years back, yes, retailers used to keep this sales period running for maximum 5 weeks, now it has extended to the present 7-8 weeks due to two reasons. First it’s due to season change as the winter last till February now. And second reason the market situation. The market is improved now but not in that shining position. I’m not taking any names, but there are still retailers who are yet to close this season.

What new strategy have you adopted this year which was not present last year? What benefits you received out of it?

For us, things are much on the expected lines, we did not launch any marketing strategy specifically to promote EOSS and generally we don’t do that.

Online retailers are offering sales and discounts throughout the year. Do you think, strategy like EOSS is different for them than the normal discount offers?

Don’t have much knowledge about the eCommerce sales as we are yet to start our own online platform.