Visual merchandising at Spencer's Hyper, Kolkata, India
Designed by Paul Ancheta, Haimanti Upadhyaya, & Nilanjon Ganguly
Image source: Paul Ancheta
FINALLY, WE opened it: the largest Spencer's hypermarket in India. After months of intense preparation, the doors of what is also Kolkata's first-ever Spencer's Hyper opened to the public at the glitzy South City Mall on 1 February 2008. It has been a blast since then, with footfalls and bill conversions exceeding anything that the company has ever done (or seen) before on a first-week run. This is easily its strongest store launch ever. The Bengalis have not since anything like this before: 72,000 swanky square feet of electronics, appliances, music, books, apparel, home decor and commodities, sports goods, furniture, fruits, vegetables, staples, and grocery items under one tall roof. The products all come from various parts of the world, and they all scream for value for money. Buttressed by a clever marketing campaign around the tag line “Taste the World”, streams of shoppers lapped it all up. There is also the “hometown” factor: Spencer's Retail is owned by the Kolkata-based RPG Group, and opening its first hypermarket in the city is almost a homecoming event. And fellow citizens are loving them back. For three weeks prior to the opening, I joined my team of three diligent and disciplined visual merchandisers in working the aisles, battling vendors and deadlines to create globally themed displays to match the international look and feel of the store. Initially, we thought we would not make the launch date, as the goods were not fully available until the week of store opening. Thankfully, the effervescence of the operations and merchandising teams infected us. The setups went smoothly, and they were fun. Once during the opening day, I peered into a shopping cart queued at the cash registers. It contained a Levi's T-shirt, jars of Chinese ingredients, and an English-language cookbook on top of sundry pieces of grocery. We did it. We made the shopper “taste the world”! Related Site: Spencer's Retail Web Site, Grocery Shopping Can be Fun!
7 INTERACTIONS:
i saw photos in media of the mall.Congrats to all merchandising & design teams.
I am sure in INDIA, FRESH FOOD category is the most difficult to handle on the merchandising front.How do you manage to marry crispness of green vegetables and create a visual appeal?I have seen Misting systems in USA?Have they been used at SPENCER'S KOLKATA?
Looks Beautiful Paul... I am not even a shopper ther but I can "Taste the world" from here! :)
That windmill is really cool, just like in kids illustrative comic books, the fabrication is really nice.
I faced great problem in home delivery of grocery, which took 4 days to reach my home though i am living within 2 km from South City Mall, moreover my grocery specially 5 kg rice was totally wet(maybe due to rain and negligence!!!). I dont know what to do because the spencer people behaved badly and took no care about that. what a bad luck !
Babli, thank you for taking the time to post your rather unpleasant experience with Spencer's Hyper in South City. I regret that you faced the issues of delayed (and wet) delivery of your groceries. Let me raise this with the store management team. In the meantime, I hope this does not hold you from enjoying what the store can offer otherwise!
Astuti and Rohit, I just realized that you've actually gone this far on my blog! So sorry for the late response. Thanks for appreciating the VM work on Spencer's South City. You must visit Gurgaon and Ghaziabad; we've worked similar magic on those stores! :)
Hi Paul,
No doubt your work is excellent. Would like to know, whether your has been adopted for all Spencer's "Taste of World" outlets or only for South city. Would like to who designed Bangalore Kormangala outlet. Great job. Best Wishes.
Reyas
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