Shoppers Stop plans greater beauty play

Chennai: Shoppers Stop wants to establish itself as a beauty destination by redesigning stores and entering into exclusive tie-ups with new international brands. The retail chain also plans to launch private brands in the beauty category.

In the past few years, Shoppers Stop has been expanding its category mix and beauty had become a category with a revenue contribution of 13 per cent. However, the contribution has been growing faster since 2013-14 to the current level of 16 per cent, the company informed the exchanges.

As part of multi-pronged strategy to re-establish itself as a premium beauty department store, Shoppers Stop will redesign 15 department stores for a premium look and feel and introduce beauty hubs. This will provide better customer shopping experience.

Four stores will run a pilot project to generate Rs 10 to 20 crore sales on an annualized basis and ROCE of 30 per cent.  These stores will improve the store merchandising with wall and gondola concept rather than shop-in-shops. Additional nine to twelve MAC shop-in-shops will generate Rs 20 to 30 crore sales on an annualized basis with a ROCE of 40 per cent.

Further, different types of stores will sell beauty products of different price points. Compact format stores will have mastige brands, existing department stores will have mid to mid-high beauty brands and there will be luxury beauty stores of Elca and Arcelia brands.

Shoppers Stop will also enter into exclusive brand tie-ups like Elca: Dior, Make up of Forever , Nars etc. It will also explore franchise opportunities for multi-brand beauty stores like Boots, Ulta, Blumercury.