| The market for wallets in India is valued at Rs 555 crore. |
| Genuine leather wallets make up 77 per cent of the market, followed by leather look-alikes (13 per cent) and fabric wallets (10 per cent). |
| Young customers between 15 and 25 years prefer visiting exclusive brand outlets (EBOs) to shop for wallets (26 per cent), followed by organised multi-brand outlets at 21 per cent, and street hawkers at 17 per cent. The visits do not necessarily convert to sales. |
| Thirty-nine per cent of people who purchased wallets did so at malls, 24 per cent purchased them at high streets and 22 per cent purchased wallets at popular shopping markets. |
| Only 17 per cent of wallets purchased were branded. The remaining 83 per cent were unbranded. |
| EBOs dedicate 27 per cent of their store space for men's merchandise to wallets while organised MBOs dedicate 31 per cent of space. |
| Selections from management journals NUGGETS |
| Incoming CEOs and general managers don't have much time to show what they can do to improve a business's performance. (In 2006, for instance, about 40 per cent of CEOs who left their jobs had lasted an average of just 1.8 years "" and many of them were ushered out the door.) |
| Within a few months at most, leaders must find ways to boost profitability, increase market share, overtake a competitor "" whatever the key tasks may be. But they can't map out specific objectives and initiatives until they have accurately assessed their companies' distinctive strengths and weaknesses and the particular threats and opportunities they face. |
| In this article, Bain consultants Gottfredson, Schaubert and Saenz provide a diagnostic template to help organisations figure all that out so they can decide which goals are reasonable and where to focus performance-improvement efforts. |
| The new leader's guide to diagnosing the business By Mark Gottfredson, Steve Schaubert and Hernan Saenz Harvard Business Review, February 2008 Subscribe to the article at www.hbr.com |
| As oil prices continue to set new records, investors outside Europe and the US are increasingly shaping trends in financial markets. The influence of these investors is likely to continue to grow over at least the next five years. |
| Without a doubt, this flood of oil money is creating new dynamics in world markets and fuelling growing concern about government connections and influence on markets. |
| Since facts about these powerful new investors have been scarce, McKinsey's research aims to ground the debate by providing data and analysis, including where this new wealth is held, how it affects markets, and what the players might do to address growing concerns over their influence. |
| The new role of oil wealth in the world economy By Diana Farrell and Susan Lund The McKinsey Quarterly January 2008 Read this article at www.mckinseyquarterly.com |
| The worldwide collapse of stock prices has many victims "" pension funds, insurance companies, hedge funds, financial services firms. But those are players who, if they are smart, have the wherewithal to withstand a steep sell-off. |
| What about the small investor, the individual who is socking away modest sums for retirement or college costs? Should small investors rush for the sidelines? Or should they view this as a buying opportunity? Knowledge@Wharton asked six experts for advice on investment strategy. |
| Advice to investors: Sit tight and batten down the hatches Knowledge@Wharton, January 23 - February 05 Read the article at http://knowledge.wharton.upenn.edu/ |
| Most industries do not begin on a single day, but it's easy to see Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg's presentation on May 24, 2007, as the starting gun in an entrepreneurial race that some have dubbed "the Facebook Economy." Zuckerberg announced that the social networking site would open to third-party developers, transforming itself into a platform on which other businesses can operate. |
| Eight months later, more than 14,000 applications from third-party developers are live on Facebook, including Scrabulous, an online version of the word game Scrabble. But Scrabulous, one of Facebook's biggest hits, may also become a victim of its own success. |
| Scrabulous and the new social operating system: How Facebook gave birth to an industry Knowledge@Wharton, January 23 - February 05 Read the article at http://knowledge.wharton.upenn.edu/ |
| In May 2004, with the war for talent in high gear, Boris Groysberg and colleagues from Harvard Business School wrote about the risks of hiring star performers away from competitors. |
| After studying the fortunes of more than 1,000 star stock analysts, they found that when a star switched companies, not only did his performance plunge, so did the effectiveness of the group he joined and the market value of his new company. But further analysis of the data reveals that it's not that simple. |
| In fact, one group of analysts reliably maintained star rankings even after changing employers: women. Unlike their male counterparts, female stars who switched firms performed just as well, in the aggregate, as those who stayed put. The 189 star women in the sample (18 per cent of the star analysts studied) achieved a higher rank after switching firms than the men did. |
| Why the discrepancy? First, says the author, the best female analysts appear to have built their franchises on portable, external relationships with clients and the companies they covered, rather than on relationships rooted within their firms. |
| By contrast, male analysts built up greater firm- and team-specific human capital by investing more in the internal networks and unique capabilities and resources of their own companies. Second, women took greater care when assessing a prospective new employer. In this article, Groysberg explores the reasons behind the star women's portable performance. |
| How star women build portable skills By Boris Groysberg Harvard Business Review, February 2008 Subscribe to the article at www.hbr.com |
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