Leveraging Home Decor!

Hindware Home Retail Private Ltd is all set to gear up its retail of total home solutions. With one EVOK Mega Home Store in Delhi, NCR, it has plans of spearheading in other cities in the near future. In the interview with Ms Avinder Batra, Hindware Mr. DK Jairath, COO, Home Retail (P) Ltd (HHRPL), COO, reveals his retail plans and the reasons for overwhelming response in Home décor market. 

Avinder Batra (AB):  Tell us about EVOK Home stores and its products and price ranges?

DK jairath(DKJ): EVOK Mega-Stores showcase wide range of world class contemporary home interior products and services ranging from Home Furniture, Furnishings and Bath products, Modular Kitchens, Flooring, Decorative Lighting, Home Décor and Lifestyle Home accessories sourced and coordinated from across the world.

At EVOK stores, Home spaces will be creatively arranged with affordable value packed home interior products in a soulful ambience designed to evoke emotions. Our range begins from Rs 500.

AB:  What is the market worth of Home décor in India and what is your share in it? What are your expectations in the near future?

DKJ: As a company policy, we do not comment on market share and related figures.

AB:  Tell our readers your expansion plans in the coming years? How much retail expansion are you expecting in the next two years?

DKJ:  EVOK forayed the home retail segment in 2008 with an investment worth Rs 250 crores. With almost three years of operations we have successfully rolled out our stores in Delhi/ NCR, Chandigarh and Lucknow.  Moving forward, we plan to roll out two more stores in Pune & Mumbai by end of 2010. In total, we plan to roll out 12-14 stores in next 12 months.

AB:  With so much competition foraying in the home retail segment, where do you find yourself in two years down the line? What is the USP of the products?

DKJ:  At EVOK, we bring in complete home solutions for our customers under one roof. What differentiates us from others is our two key services - ‘Turnkey solutions’ & ‘Design to Build’ services.

‘Turn-key solutions’ help customers right from design selection, to conceptualization, installation and post care services including electrical works. Also, the 2D and 3D services of EVOK as a part of ‘Design to Build’ solution helps them showcase their home spaces virtually visualize their home space even before the actual installation. This helps the customers to make the choices and preferences accordingly.

Customisation of home solutions is another key service that we think has been accepted well by our customers as we provide solutions based on the space & budget of the customers. We target mid & the upper mid segment. Keeping in mind the aspirations of our target customers, we come up with interesting offers for our customers on regular basis. 

For example, during summers we had introduced a discount offer for customers on selling of old furniture and a purchase of new range. Recently, making it special for Diwali, we are running a discount of upto 30% on purchase of our products. We believe such initiatives help connecting with our customers in a very effective way and help us understand their needs and add to services accordingly.

AB: Are you into franchising? What are the minimum investment requirements for a franchisor?

DKJ: All EVOK stores are company owned, but the store size differs as we have different formats of specialty chains that cover living, kitchen and bath domains.

AB: Do you have your stores in the tier II & III cities? What are your plans to take your retail presence in these cities?

DKJ: Two years back EVOK rolled out its first store in Faridabad and there has been no looking back after the tremendous response we received from all quarters. Since then, the chain has grown successfully, with 4 Home Fashion Mega stores at Crown Interiorz Mall- Faridabad; West Gate Mall, Rajouri Garden, New Delhi; JMD Regent Arcade, MG Road Gurgaon; Shipra Mall, Indirapuram and 1 super specialty Kitchen + Bath store at GK-2 New Delhi. Pushing our boundaries beyond Delhi/ NCR, we have recently opened EVOK mega Homes stores in Chandigarh & Lucknow making a total of 7 outlets across India. We plan to roll out two more stores in Pune & Mumbai by end of this year. Evok is poised to open 12-14 stores in next 12 months.

AB: What are your festive season promotional schemes? How much are you expecting this festive season?

DKJ: Promotional scheme of upto 30% money back through gift vouchers on product purchased and based on the value of purchase.

We are expecting 30-35% growth in sales through this Diwali Offer.