WELCOME to The Abof World: A physical retail space where we sell a high blend of trend and

fashion!

Through our primary research, we got to understand that customers still prefer physical retail
stores to have touch and feel factor as 69% of the audience who took our survey responded
that they like physical stores more. Hence it should be highly profitable to open a retail store
supporting the website. 41% of our target audience likes to buy from an aggregator store
present in a mall. Following this, we’ll have a presence in selective stores of aggregator
platforms such as Lifestyle, Planet fashion, Shopper’s Stop etc. Also, we’ll have our own
exclusive stand-alone stores, catering to about 15.6 % of our target audience (acc. to primary
research) taking into account the cost incurred while renting the space for them. Thus
collectively, we’ll be catering to about 56.6% of our T.G. in the primary phase of our operation
and will further expand to exclusive in-the-mall stores. In both these kind of stores, we’ll only
have SKUs of our private label brands which are Abof and Skult.

A good store plan is important to keep customers engaged for a longer time which can
eventually make them purchase something extra. The store’s layout should be consistent with
the brand’s positioning and should provide a positive experience for the customers. Store layout
can be a way of creating a competitive advantage in an excessively competitive retail market.

Elements of a store plan:

 Planning and circulation

 Store fronts and façade
 Store communication
 Category flow
 Store fixtures
 Materials, lights and music

a) Planning and circulation:

 The store plan to be used for ABOF should be geometric store plan. It uses racks
and fixtures to create an interesting and out-of-the-ordinary type of store design
without a high cost. (We can have separate floors for men and women in our
stand-alone stores)
 Navigation should not be rigid with enough space for customers to roam freely
 We would keep accessories like socks, rubber bands, ear rings, stoles and scarf
near the billing counter. When a person has bought clothes, there is a high
possibility of picking up these small accessories as a part of impulse buying
  We would keep bags and wallets in the front because most of the people will
come for clothes and apparels will anyway be purchased. Bags and wallets will be
our low penetration area, they should be kept at the beginning so that the
customer at least goes through the section
 After bags and wallets, we will have the apparel section. The apparel section will
have clothes organized into categories similar to that on the website. This will
establish synergy between both channels.
 The clothes similar in color would be grouped together and each set can have
matching footwear beneath. This will motivate customers to buy footwear as
well.
 Besides the bag and wallet section you would have a separate “What’s hot”
section separately for men and women just like the website. According to our
primary research we know that approximately 67% of the people will be
motivated to check this section out. Like the website, it will have all the latest
trends with labels.
 The website has a separate column for clothes and other products on sale.
These sales apparels can be displayed on the power aisle. The purpose of the
power aisle in retailers such as warehouse grocery stores is not merely to
promote the sales of certain products. Instead, the purpose of the power aisle is
primarily to aid in the establishment of the store’s image. The placement of
clothes on sale on the power aisle can give an imagery about the store being
affordable and price effective while still maintaining its modernity.

b) Store front and façade:

 65% of the people who took the survey for our primary research said that they
would prefer a “look of the day”, which would be a combination of clothes
suggested by the company every day. This look of the day will be displayed every
day in the store front but inside the store.
 The store front will have glass doors and windows so that the colors, lights and
clothes are always visible outside and attracts more and more people
 Store front should convey our positioning of following trends, being fashionable
and particularly catering to youngsters of the age group of 18-25 years of age

c) Store communication
 The store will be full of signs. As already stated, the categories of clothes will be
arranged and labeled just like they have been on website.
 Each floor will have arrows on the wall indicating the direction customer should
take if he wants to go to a part or category of clothing
 All the discounts and promotional offers will also be displayed properly on the
top of each shelf
d) Category flow
 Category adjacency: In case of a retail store, all products categories all related.
Bottoms should be kept near the tops or vice versa
 Customer shopping behavior: Impulse products to be kept near the billing
counter. We are keeping rubber bands, socks, scarfs etc. near the billing counters

e) Store fixtures:
 Height of the fixture: The heights of the fixture should be around 5 or 5 and a
half feet so that customers have greater visibility of all the products. Keeping it
higher would decrease the feasibility

f) Lights and music: these elements can accentuate the consumer behavior and can give
premium or non-premium feel to the customers and thus are very important
 Trending music: the store is for youngsters who are always attracted to the
trending Bollywood or Hollywood songs. The music should preferably be fast as
this increases the amount shopped by customers
 Lights- bright white color

Differentiators:

 Fashion expert: In each of our store we will have 2-3 staff members who will be
trained by ABOF to guide customers as well as would be cross trained to handle
every department of the customer shopping experience journey (Search, Select,
Deciding & Buying). These staff members will be called “Fashion experts” and
will guide the customers in terms of what combinations, look or clothes look
good on them. We will turn ABOF’s clothes selling into consultative selling

 Look of the day: Our target market of millennial in 18-25 years of age has a very
strong desire to be appreciated by the society and to be accepted in the society
in terms of dressing sense and fashion. In this situation ABOF can come up with a
 unique solution of having a “Look of the day” for each day. This will be a
combination of clothes in accordance with the latest trends. This will help the
customers to make their choices faster and also provide someone a status
symbol when he wears ABOF’s look of the day on a particular day

 What’s hot: ABOF’s website also focuses a lot on latest designs and trends. When
we enter the store, we can have a separate column for men and women having
clothes, footwear and accessories which are trending and are in fashion. Trends
and fashion changes a lot in case of millennials and spreads very fast. This
column will increase the ease of shopping for those customers who always just
want to keep pace with the trends and have to try all the new fashion.
Particularly, this section will be displayed at the left side of the store, since
trends from secondary research say that human psychology tends to look
for/start the shopping from the left side of the store.

 QR code scanning along with the live model: During our primary research, we
got to know that 26% of the customers who took the questionnaire find trying
clothes cumbersome. For this kind of customers each of the clothing should have
a QR code. This QR code when scanned, the customer will be able to see the
cloth tried on their own live model which is provided by the “ABOF”
application. This can also help in increasing the application downloads

 Customer centric personalized marketing: When a customer shops, a

registration form can be filled by him which will record his partner’s, spouse’s
and his own birthday or special occasions, he/she wants to register. ABOF can
remind them a week before by sending exclusive offers as well as suggestions,
best suited to them and as to what to gift their loved ones. This will make the
customers’ life easier and thus enhance the relationship between and increase
their loyalty towards us

 Our major focus on variety of clothes: Most of customers who took our survey
want variety of clothes and this is the most important factor when they go for
clothes shopping. We will ensure this in our store and this can be our USP for
selling. Variety ensures that everyone who comes to shop finds his own style in
the store

 Brands selling at the store need to have a clear positioning on price: 57.1% of
the customers who took our survey said that they don’t like it when a same
 brand has two same types of products with different prices for example: the
same brand’s shirt being sold for Rs. 200 along with a shirt of the same brand
being sold for Rs 1500. This creates confusion about the positioning of the
brand in the minds of customers. We can only sell brands who are clear on what
they stand for

 Customer engagement through Kult_TV: From secondary research, we got to

know that customer engagement in a store in terms of time spent in a store is
directly proportional to the purchase that they make. For this, we have
conceptualized the idea of Kult_TV which will air everything that’s in trend and
will also show leading fashion shows going around the world mentioning the
great styles by leading designers of this era. The videos to be played will also
include interviews of models, fashionistas and celebs drawing attention to what
they define is their style

 Channel Integration between physical and online retail: We can provide our
customers the facility of Offline Information-Online Buying and Online
Information-Offline Buying. They also get the facility of ‘Store pick-up’ and
return if they don’t like the product, then and there. This will save the company
the extra transportation cost loss, which used to happen initially when only
online retail was in existence. This works as- When the customer places an order
of the SKU of a product in the online space, he gets the option of home delivery
and store pick up. Based on the availability of the SKU, the order will be placed in
a physical retail store by the company

 Building customers for physical retail: At the launch of the stores across the
country, we can provide access to an additional feature on the app, ‘Locate your
nearest store’ which will take the customer to the nearest store, with a google
map integration. To ensure the usage of this feature, we’ll give special discount
coupons to the customers only redeemable at the stores

 3D trail mirror:

Product mix:Line:
Men- Product The mix will cater to both the segments of Men and Women separately.The
Men
components of our mix are:
 Upperwear (T-Shirts Casual
Shirts,Swaeters & Sweatshirts Women
and Jackets)
 Bottomwear (Jeans, Joggers&  Upperwear (Tops & Tees, Shirts, Dresses, Shrugs &
Tracks, Casual bottoms) Jackets and Sweaters & Sweatshirts)
 Footwear (Casual Shoes, Flip-  Bottomwear (Jeans, Fashion Bottoms, Joggers & Tracks)
Flops & Slippers and Boat shoes)  Ethnicwear (Kurtas, Kurtis and Ethnic bottoms)
 Accessories (Bags, Wallets,  Footwear (Casual Shoes, Sandals & Heels and Flats &
Ascots, Scarfs and Belts) Flip-Flops)
The Product mix will have varieties of categories but with limited SKUs to provide the customer
with a nice shopping experience, enough space to take the awesomeness in and avoid confusing
placement of humungous number of SKUs.

The inventory in the store will be changed every month to bring out and maintain the freshness
of the store and provide our customers what they deserve, a scoop of delight with the brownie
of trend.