When Titan opened its first store at Safina Plaza on Infantry Road in 1988, retail as we know it was in its infancy. And so was the business of watches. Twenty-five years later, the retail landscape has changed. As have the very format of retail outlets, evident when the company launched its 1000th store on 100 ft road in the upmarket Indiranagar area on Monday — a swank big-format store spread over two floors.
Harking back to the times when there was nothing glitzy about watch stores, Bhaskar Bhat, managing director of Titan Company Limited (known earlier as Titan Industries Limited), says the clue to the company's growth was in opening stores in unrepresented areas. "Those days it was quite an exercise to buy a watch. You probably had to go to Chickpet to buy one." Today, Titan Company has 82 outlets in Bangalore alone.
So, what has changed since then? In certain ways, Bhat feels, the essence remains the same. Customers still look out for a certain kind of ambience and certification. "If it is a company store or even perceived to be put up by a company, it's a question of trust."
With a retail footprint across 177 cities, 26 states, three union territories and a total retail area of 1395712 sq ft, Titan Company owns and operates stores for watches under World of Titan, Helios and Fastrack; jewellery under the retail brands Tanishq, Zoya, and GoldPlus, and multibrand eyewear under the brand Eye Plus.
For the company, which started as a joint venture between the Tata Group and the Tamil Nadu Industrial Development Corporation (TIDCO), about 40 per cent of its outlets are present in tier-II and tier-III cities. The sales from these towns, however, is 30 per cent.
Karnataka remains an important target state for the Bangalore-based company. More than 11 per cent (112 in all) of its outlets across the six formats are here. The market share of Titan in Karnataka is higher (60 per cent) than the all-India share (55 per cent).
With the launch of the Indiranagar store, Titan Company arguably becomes the first Indian company with 1000 stores in seven varied formats.
