Retailers are seeing strong demand after the government’s eased lockdown restriction and are hoping that the festive season will boost sales.
“People have learnt to live with this condition (COVID-19 pandemic). Week-on-week we have seen an uptick in our numbers, but the festive season will be a major ice breaker. We believe the festive season will bring in additional sales,” Arunkumar Nath, CFO, Levi Strauss & Co, said.
“India has always been an occasion led shopper. Around 97 percent of India goes out to shop when there is some occasion. The big festive period is coming, which is likely to be good for retailers,” he explained.
Many retailers are hoping to make up for their losses in the lockdown, with sales during the festival season.
India will celebrate Dussehra in October, followed by Diwali in November and Christmas in December.
Agreeing with Nath, Nandakumar Tirumalai, Vice President-Finance at Titan, said the worst is behind us and we are on the recovery path. “The second quarter (of FY21) was good in terms of sales. Q3 is looking better and we will be back to full recovery in Q4,” he said, adding that jewellery is ahead in terms of recovery.
They were speaking at a CFO webinar, titled: 'Road to Recovery', organised by the Retailers Association of India (RAI).
Puma, a sportswear brand, has witnessed pent up in demand. “In the lockdown, people have got into fitness. We expect they will continue ahead as well,” said Vidhya Srinivasan, Executive Director & CFO, Puma India.
She added that heading into the festive season, numbers would improve further.
Many retailers are hoping to make up for the losses in the lockdown, with sales during the festival season.
Levi Strauss and Puma said they are seeing robust sales from their online channel.
“We don’t have a larger online share as the ticket size is big. For Tanishq, our online share is low, but for CaratLane where the ticket size is small, our online share is more than Tanishq,” Tirumalai stated.
Dalpat Jain, CFO of Manyavar, said their business is more of touch and feel, so his customers mostly prefer shopping from stores rather than shopping via the online channel.
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