Caselet ID –

PETA FOOTWEAR SOLUTIONS: FROM SELLING SHOES TO SELLING POWER

Dr. G.M. Jayaseelan
Assistant Professor – Symbiosis Institute of Business Management, Pune

Varun, one of the partners of AGP Pvt. Ltd. (Franchisee of Peta) was enquiring about the sales
trend in the financial year 2015-2016 to store manager Dravid. ‘We have done well overall but
sports shoes category is dull’ was the reply from store manager.
Peta Shoe Company has enjoyed a long legacy of quality footwear in India. The brand has won
the hearts of people in wide ranges and power of endurance in the formal shoes and footwear
category. It is global company that sells to about 1 million customers every day. Its
manufacturing facilities enable the brand to respond to the changing needs of customers in the
global market. The company is not only good in manufacturing and designing of shoes but also
in the creation of new business models to cater to quickly changing markets. Peta launched retail
stores through a franchise model, with an objective to expanding into semi-urban and rural
markets in India.
Dravid continued ‘Sir, we need to discuss this with Regional Sales Manager (RSM) during his
visit to our outlet in June’. Being an MBA graduate, Varun was trying to identify some of the
internal drivers for pursuing growth through services and solutions. This seemed to be irrelevant
to Dravid, a leather technology degree holder as they were in the business of selling products and
not services. Moreover moving into services and solutions requires redesigning of the entire
business model. RSM of Peta appreciated this idea during their meeting in June, though he was
of the opinion that mastering the manufacturing model does not offer any guarantees to succeed
in Solutions business. The logic seemed to be very different. Excellence in service design and
delivery are important drivers for success which the manufacturing firms tend to ignore or just
could not master it. In order to have an experienced sales team at the franchise outlets, Peta even
invited retiring employees of the company and offered them Franchise, and wanted them to use
their expertise gained during their times in the company as well continue their relationship with
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This case has been written by Dr.G.M. Jayaseelan and can be used in the areas like Service Marketing, Service Delivery,
Servqual Model- Gap Analysis.
Peta. Everybody accepts that power of endurance more than style is the USP of Peta but the
marketers were not able to drive this fact strongly across to the customers. The Vice President
Marketing of Peta was addressing all the franchisee owners and rolled out his plan to provide
Solutions along with selling footwear to customers through the franchises. He started with the
need to move from selling just shoes to selling the power of endurance. Peta Footwear Solutions
will be sold to customers purchasing shoes for 3 years contract of Rs.300 whereby the laundry
and repair services will be offered by Peta through its Franchises. The company will equip and
train the Franchise operators to wash and dry the shoes at regular intervals to increase the
lifetime or the power of endurance of sports shoes. They will also undertake the replacement of
shoe sole after 18 months and repair of shoe sole during the rest of the contract period. Moreover
they will also replace the shoe inner sole every year while at the time of shoe laundry. Customers
will pay for replacement parts while there will be no service fee in addition to contract fee.
There were exchange of questions and discussions among the Franchise owners for quite some
time and finally VP had to interfere and closed his speech with the following statements. ‘The
Franchise outlets will retain the contract fee over and above the margin on sale of shoe parts and
accessories. Now the floor is open to questions from our trade partners’.

Questions -
1. Why should Peta move towards solutions?
2. What could be the customer benefits of adopting Peta footwear solutions?
3. Why should Peta rely so much on its franchise outlets?

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This case has been written by Dr.G.M. Jayaseelan and can be used in the areas like Service Marketing, Service Delivery,
Servqual Model- Gap Analysis.