Retail Management : A Promising Career Path

Niranjan Singh *

Manipur Mall being built as March 27 2012 :: Pix - TSE

Having worked in the retail industry in international and national markets for over 15 years, I am now convinced of the opportunity that retail management as a career; has to offer to the youth of the north-east and the impact, the sector will have on the economy of the region.

Since the cream of the student population continue to opt for conventional careers in medicine, engineering and civil services, it appears that our society has still not realized opportunities in new economy sectors, like services which support a major chunk of revenues in our own metropolitans & advanced economies worldwide. However, recently due to more exposure through cable TV and penetration of the internet, youth have started opting for jobs in private corporate houses.

In spite of the new interest in the private sector, there has been negligible interest in the student population opting for retail management career. There are a few reasons for this. Firstly, it could be due to the lack of awareness and guidance in this field because India itself started seeing organized retail in the beginning of the decade.

Secondly, there could be an image problem with the industry perceived by our society as to why my child should stand on the sales floor of a retail store selling branded garments or other related products. The same fixation happened with the hotel management ten years ago when parents thought why should my child stand in the restaurant and serve other people. Thirdly, people felt good doing retail therapy - shopping in the great malls of the big cities and branded retail outlets of the high street but they never could imagine a career out of it. Maybe they could not link their practical act of shopping to retail management.

In a common man's term, retail management is nothing but what you come across in our everyday shopping, though technically, retailing means cutting of the bulk into units or pieces. Or names like Shoppers Stop, Pantaloon, Big Bazaar, Levi's, Adidas, Reebok, Tommy Hilfiger, Nike etc will stimulate your attention towards retail brands. What we see in Thangal Bazaar and Paona Bazaar, showrooms are mostly "Mom & Pop" independent retail stores which are unorganized.

What is rapidly taking over the Indian retail industry are the big corporate houses with deep pocket entering the organized sector of the retail industry. This act of modernizing the retail industry from unorganized to organized will take many years and here lies the great opportunity of employment, personal growth and development and skill enhancement of our youth.

In your recent visits to the malls and branded retail outlets in the bigger cities like Delhi, Kolkata, Bangalore and Mumbai you must have come across north-east boys and girls working on the sales floor of retail outlets. But when you take a closer peek into the hierarchy of the management of the same retail companies, you will hardly find any north-east person in the senior or top management. Whereas when I enquired the senior management of the same companies as to why do they employ North East staff, the answer was that they found the North East staff very hard working, well groomed with a good sense of fashion, better English communication than their other counterparts hailing from other parts of India.

If that is the case then why don't we see North East people in the middle or senior management of the retail companies? The first thing which comes to my mind is that our youth view retail job as a temporary job. They do not stick to the job long enough to learn the best practices and move up the hierarchy.

Another reason is the lack of retail education and training workshops at the Diploma or Post Graduate Diploma level to the youth of the North East region. Retail education definitely helps them to climb up the hierarchy into more specific retail functions like sales & Operations, Buying & Merchandising and Visual merchandising to name a few but every true retail professional should start their job on the sales floor selling merchandise first. It is the universal truth of growth and development in professional retail companies. Hope this is considered and understood by any individual before jumping into a retail career.

We notice mushrooming of management institutes in most of the cities in North East which offer MBA and BBA degrees but we still can't see any retail management institute in the region. Part of the reason could be the general obsession of the people with MBA and BBA degrees hoping that they will have the degree and a good placement. If one does primary market research of these institutes properly, the findings are that students do get the degrees at the end of the course but placement has been a constant problem due to a weak interface with the industry. Another reason is the unavailability of experienced retail professionals from the industry in the region to teach and train the core retail modules and best practices of the industry.

The opportunity for retail jobs in the retail industry is colossal. The only way forward for retail industry in India is to go up and grow exponentially in the next 25 years. The Indian retail industry is on the verge of a revolution! Market liberalization and increasingly assertive consumers are sowing the seeds of a retail transformation that is bringing bigger Indian and multinational operators on to the scene. A number of Indian and international retailers are entering this nascent market and retailing as an industry in India is coming alive!

There has been a significant change in retail trading over the years, a transition from the traditional retail sector to organized retailing. The size of Indian retail at present is US$ 427 billion and US$ 637 billion by 2015. By 2012, organized retail segment grew to US$ 110 billion and US$ 220 billion by 2018 whereas by 2018, US$ 640 billion will represent unorganized retail. By 2015, only 20% will represent modern organized sector. The remaining unorganized 80% will be the fresh untapped market for the corporate retail companies to explore, exploit and take a share from the huge pie. With around 13% contribution to the GDP and 7% employment of the national workforce, retailing, no doubt is a strong pillar of the Indian economy and a sector offering huge opportunities.

The fast evolving Indian organized retail scenario is looking ahead to many strong regional and national players, emerging across formats and product categories. Most of these players are now gearing up to expand far more rapidly than the initial years of starting up. Most have improved profitability after going through their respective learning curves. Indian consumers too, are rapidly evolving and accepting modern formats overwhelmingly.

Brands world-wide are willing to partner with retailers in India. Last but not the least; the emerging malls have taken India by storm. Retail space is no more a constraint for growth. With India on the radar of global retailers and suppliers, the retail arena today is very different – the opportunities are incredible. According to Global Retail Development Index by AT Kearney, India is positioned as the leading destination for retail investment.

The present scenario depicts that that there will be very high demand for talented manpower in the retail business. It is predicted that retail employers in India will need more than 2 million skilled people in various specialized areas of retail across the country. Retail is challenging, engrossing, dynamic and quality education is required to advance and succeed in the retail industry today. Moreover, due to its co-relation with other service sector and industrial sectors, organized retailing is generating a great deal of indirect employment – security, electrical and mechanical maintenance, property management service, parking, sorting, packaging etc.

If both direct and indirect employment is taken together, organized retailing is bound to create better paid and quality jobs. Domestic and foreign retailers will invest US$35 billion by 2013 creating an additional 2.5 million jobs (25 lacs jobs) in the process. Bharti is investing US$ 2.5 bilion in the Indian market. Birla is looking at spending US$ 2.5 billion. Reliance is putting in US$ 6 billion for fast and big expansion. All these expansion phase will definitely result in explosion of jobs in retail industry.

In a typical retail organization, there are many functions which can be classified as the main functions and the support functions. The main key functions in a retail organization are Sales & Operations, Buying & Merchandising and Visual Merchandising. All these three functions need an integrated approach to drive the results. Support functions as termed are Marketing, Finance, Logistics & Warehousing, Human Resource and Administration. One should consider a career in retail if he or she has passion and high energy for the job. Other attributes required for the job are common sense, basic mathematics, empathy, teamwork, good communication and inter-personal skills.

For the function of Sales & Operation, retail companies are looking for key skills and aptitude which include being nice by nature, people oriented, customer focused, inter-personal skills, empathy, passion, high energy, detailed, clear communication, grooming & presentation, planning & organization, systematic execution, commercial, analytical, motivation & inspiration and basic computer skills.

Buying & Merchandising needs people who are analytical, numerical, strong basic mathematics, clear communications, inter-personal skills, planning & organization, customer focused, commercial, detailed, passion and basic computer skills including advanced excel. If sales & operations are the execution hands of a retail company then buying & merchandising is the heart and soul.

Visual Merchandising is the creative side of the business making sure that stores are looking attractive and meaningful to shop for the customers. They monitor if the corporate visual merchandising guidelines for the season have been implemented correctly in all the stores of the brand. They look into window display guidelines, correct usage of equipments in different departments, mannequin display standards, right grouping and display of different story themes of merchandise, correct adjacency of product placement and in-store communications. Visual merchandising also has to strike a fine balance between creativity and commerciality. Striking of this balance in reality is the biggest challenge of visual merchandising team.

In support functions, marketing and logistics & warehousing are important enough to reckon because the marketing function does brand building of the retail brand and consequent footfall in the stores. Logistics & warehousing become very important because of just-in- time delivery, right allocation at the right time and the availability of a particular item in the store.

One can bother to start as a sales person in a store after finishing higher secondary education and work their way up. But this will take a very long time to get to where you want to be in the management. The best suited candidates for retail companies are those who have done retail education either at the undergraduate or post graduate level or graduates with few years of retail work experience. Retail education helps you grow faster, of course with merit, within the company than your counterparts who are not retail educated even though they all started at the same level.

Retailers Association of India (RAI) has declared that there is definitely a huge shortage of skilled people in the retail industry. Among the retail companies, there has been a war for retail talent. Therefore, RAI has formed alliances with 15 business schools from the North, East, West and South India to conduct Post graduate diploma in business management with specialization in retail.

However, there are few institutes in India which are completely retail focused such as Mudra Institute of Communications (MICA), Indian Retail School (IRS), National Institute of Fashion Technology (NIFT) and Jugeswar Centre for Retail Excellence (JCRE), Guwahati. Studying in retail specific institutes will give students the advantage of development of key retail skills and good placement due to excellent industry interface.