Pantaloon goes for a comestic change

To open beauty salons, diagnostic centres within malls.

Having established itself as a major player in the retail space, Pantaloon Retail is now foraying into the services area with an entire range of diagnostic healthcare centres and beauty salons.

The first of the salons, Star and Sitara, will open in Bangalore in March and is aimed at the same profile of customers who visit a Big Bazaar outlet.

"Any customer who is comfortable in a Big Bazaar will feel at home here as well," says Kishore Biyani, managing director, Pantaloon Retail. "Health and beauty forms about 10 per cent of a consumers expenses, and we intend to capture part of that outgo," he added.

In addition to the salons, Pantaloon will also be setting up diagnostic centres offering eye, skin and dental treatments among others.

Rahul Bhalchandra, head - wellness, Pantaloon Retail, however, says they are not looking at a hospital kind of a set up, but more of preventive care.

"We wont have emergency rooms but will be more oriented towards preventive and maintenance care," he explains.

The centres will also include fitness centres, gyms, pharmacies, beauty retail centres as well as alternative treatments like ayurveda and homeopathy. Bhalchandra was previously head of Health and Glow, the RPG group venture.

"We will be setting up the wellness centres within the malls that Kshitij (a Pantaloon promoted company) will be constructing. In addition to the wellness centres, there will also be smaller standalone units like just pharmacies or cosmetic retail outlets within our other stores which we will start opening by March," says Bhalchandra.

Bhalchandra says that since they are essentially retailers, the idea is to find the appropriate partners which would offer these services.

For the salon, however, the initial staff will be recruited and trained by the company directly. These would be set across 2,500 square feet and will offer services to men as well as women. However, the men and women sections would be segregated.

The complete holistic centres, the name for which is still under consideration, would be spread over 25,000-30,000 square feet approximately.