Landmark, the Chennai-based chain of bookstores (and now a part of the Tata conglomerate) has been struggling, at least in Bangalore. They had opened their second store at the Garuda Swagat Mall, but had to close it down owing to differences with the management of the mall. They have opened their newest store in Bangalore at the Orion Mall in Rajajinagar. This is located on the ground floor and opened in September 2012, and has a different layout for the books section than its Forum Mall store. In October 2012 they also changed the layout of their Forum Mall store also to match the Orion Mall layout.
View Larger Map of Orion Mall
While the floor space devoted to books has shrunk dramatically from what used to be the case till a few years ago, the new layout is designed to be more appealing, more "contrasty" (lots of bright white and yellow lettering on black), and more discounts - you can see "3-for-2" stickers pasted all over the aisles. They have also tried, and I would say successfully so, to arrange books more thematically, and that attracts more eyeballs to those books.
They have also added a wall of "bestsellers" that are categorized into "Fiction", "Non Fiction", "Management", "Kids", and so on - again with several of those bestsellers available under the "3-for-2" discount scheme.
It will be interesting to see how their books business compares with Crosswords, which has been focusing more on its books business as opposed to Landmark that seems to be adopting a strategy of selling books at often steep discounts as a way to attract shoppers to spend on other, possibly higher margin, items in the store, like perfumes, chocolates, and the like.
© 2012, Abhinav Agarwal (अà¤िनव अग्रवाल). All rights reserved.
View Larger Map of Orion Mall
While the floor space devoted to books has shrunk dramatically from what used to be the case till a few years ago, the new layout is designed to be more appealing, more "contrasty" (lots of bright white and yellow lettering on black), and more discounts - you can see "3-for-2" stickers pasted all over the aisles. They have also tried, and I would say successfully so, to arrange books more thematically, and that attracts more eyeballs to those books.
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| Photo taken while seated on the floor, dog-tired, waiting for the family to finish up. |
It will be interesting to see how their books business compares with Crosswords, which has been focusing more on its books business as opposed to Landmark that seems to be adopting a strategy of selling books at often steep discounts as a way to attract shoppers to spend on other, possibly higher margin, items in the store, like perfumes, chocolates, and the like.
© 2012, Abhinav Agarwal (अà¤िनव अग्रवाल). All rights reserved.
