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In the just-concluded weekend, R City mall at Ghatkopar in Mumbai’s central suburbs had a tough time managing the heavy car traffic to it.
The mall, 60 per cent of whose tenants are apparel retailers, saw a 25 per cent growth in car traffic during the weekend, compared to last year’s pre-Diwali weekend. The mall itself saw a 40-45 per cent increase in store sales.
“We could not manage the traffic. Since exams ended on Friday, the family crowd was out in full swing,” said Anupam T, chief executive officer (malls) at Runwall group, which owns R City. Notwithstanding the discount sales by e-commerce portals, apparel retailers posted strong pre-Diwali sales on the weekend. “I think the overall Diwali sales market is Rs 10,000 crore and online has captured just Rs 100 crore of that,” said Anupam. Global fashion brand Jack & Jones posted a 95 per cent growth in its pre-Diwali sales, said an executive privy to its sales numbers. “If you have the right products at the right price, customers do come and buy,” said the executive. According to him, during the just-concluded weekend, offline retailers did much higher sales than online retailers.
Alok Dubey, CEO of Arvind Lifestyle Brands, which sells US Polo, Nautica, Arrow and so on, said closer to festive dates, the chances of online retailers delivering on-time are slim and, hence, offline retailers see more action. Arvind itself has seen a 15 per cent jump in its pre-Diwali sales this year as well as last year, Dubey added.
DLF Brands, which manages brands such as Mothercare and Forever 21, is experiencing a like-to-like growth of 25-30 per cent across its brands. Like-to-like growth is the increase in sales from the same store in comparative quarters. “The range across our brands is large, which helped us post good sales,” said Dipak Agarwal, CEO of DLF Brands. “Even today, 90 per cent of apparel sales happen offline. Only those branded segments where people can compare and find huge price difference, do they buy,” said Prashant Agarwal, joint managing director at Wazir Advisors.
According to Dubey, both south and West regions were 30% above target and North is 10% below target as winter is yet to set in.
Most apparel brands believe that November sales will be lower this year due to the fact that it does not have many marriage dates.
"Last November, we had a lot of wedding dates which pushed the sales," Dubey said.
