Depot hunts for books, music to shore up sales

Depot, the books and music venture of Pantaloon Retail, is banking on exclusive merchandise in its stores to drive sales. Preeti Vyas, business head, Depot, said by the end of the year about 20 per cent of the books and music in the stores would have exclusive content.

The company is working with various publishers, like EuroKids, to develop exclusive content. "We are either taking works which are already in the public domain or acquiring copyrights of works and reproducing them after enriching the content in some way," said Vyas.

The company is following a similar model for music as well and will be working with music companies, like Venus, to come out with special compilations, which would be exclusive for Depot.

While this has been done before in the music space, it is probably for the first time a retailer is looking at a direct tie-up with a publisher for exclusive content.

Vyas said the other area where the store would focus is regional language literature. "By June 2007, about 20 per cent of the books and 60 to 70 per cent of the music in our stores would be from the regional languages," said Vyas, adding that the retail store had identified about eight languages and would initially focus on Gujarati and Kannada.

Here again, the store would look at either creating exclusive content or repackaging existing works with a value addition.

The company has am ambitious growth plan to reach 100 stores by June next year from the existing ten. These would be both standalone as well as corners stores in other Pantaloon Retail formats.

The retailer is looking at achieving a turnover of Rs 100 crore over the next 18 months, with the target being Rs 800 crore by 2010. As of June, the turnover for Depot was about Rs 70 crore.