Bose to step up company-owned exclusive retail stores

Bose Corporation India will continue to step up the number of its company-owned exclusive retail stores by increasing the number from nine to 16 by March 2007.

Bose, in India, is selling directly through exclusive retail store route rather than going for the traditional distributor-dealer channel that it follows worldwide. It has no plans in the near future to switch to its global channel partnership strategy.

"The stores are mostly rented, so the investments is into staff training," said Ratish Pandey, general manager, Bose Corporation India, when asked about the investment per store. By the end of this fiscal, Bose plans to have 12 stores, making it the company with the maximum number of company-owned stores in the premium audio category.

Currently, the company has retail outlets in Bangalore, Hyderabad, Ahmedabad, Chennai, Delhi, Mumbai and Gurgaon. Bose is targeting an 80 per cent growth in 2005-06 and surpassing the 60 per cent year-on-year growth that it achieved in the past three years. Ratish did not divulge details about the revenues or the number of units that it sells in India.

Besides the retail sales, Bose also operates in the professional sound systems space where it is witnessing growth mainly from demand created from MNCs, premium hotels, auditoriums, and IT and ITES companies.

"We have a dominant share with the ITeS companies with our sound-masking solutions. These enable sound to reduce even in area with 40 to 100 call centre executives," Pandey added.

Bose which has products between Rs 7,900 and Rs 2,29,000 lakh is realising high-growth in the Rs 1,50,000 plus category and below Rs 70,000 category. Its products include multi-media speakers, headphones, stereo speaker systems, wave systems, lifestyle music and home-theatre systems.

Bose has a dominant share in the premium retail audio market segment that is estimated at Rs 100 crore.