Arcus on expansion spree

Arcus, the complete home and building retail store and part of the Turner Morrison Group, is on a major expansion spree. The company, which opened its first showroom in Gurgaon, Haryana, recently is set to spread its net in Delhi (trans-Yamuna and west Delhi) and enter the lucrative markets of Mumbai (where the store is expected to be fully operational by middle of this year), Chennai, Hyderabad and Bangalore. The idea is to have 10 more Arcus retail stores over the next three years. With these in place, the company expects to generate revenue of Rs 50 crore by 2004.

A very ambitious plan indeed. But the Arcus brass believes it is possible. Arvind Nagarajan, CEO, Arcus, says, "There is no one-stop-shop in the home building retail industry. We saw a huge untapped market there. Arcus is the only retail shop that services all the requirements of the consumers giving them good value for money under one roof."

According to intelligent estimates, people abroad spend around 2-2.5 times their annual income on building their homes. In comparison, in India people of the higher income group spend around six to eight times their annual income on building their homes. Costs apart, building a house itself is a tedious task - one has to buy all the material that goes both into construction and in doing up the place from all sorts of places.

For consumers therefore, Arcus translates the dream of building a house into a painless reality. The month-old store at Gurgaon has started attracting a 1,500-strong traffic on weekends. The company had a very good reason to choose Gurgaon as the location for the first store. Says Nagarajan, "Gurgoan is the hub of all construction activities."

With an initial investment of Rs 12 crore, the lavishly built shop is spread on an area of 30,000 sq ft. The store is designed in a very customer friendly way, with 25,000 items to choose from to build/renovate the house - complete with background music serenading the lovely dreams of beautifying the house.

To get the marketing mix right, Arcus commissioned a research under ORG-Marg sometime back. The study revealed that while building their houses consumers focused mainly on the kitchen, the lighting of the house, the bathroom, and the flooring. Accordingly these four sections have been strategically displayed at the four corners of the store. Arcus also has an in-house team of professional staff to give buyers interesting options within the budget specified by them. "There is no end to giving value-added services to the customers," says Navroze Dhondy, CEO, Percept Advertising, the agency handling the Arcus account. "At Arcus our aim is to ensure a pleasurable home building experience."

From basics to aesthetics, Arcus gives a lot of options to the consumers. From tiles, to fittings, paints, hardware, electricals, to CKD wardrobes - everything is available at competitive prices. Its vendors include established brands like Asian Paints, Nerolac Paints, Parryware, Hindware, Bajaj Electricals, Somany Tiles and Pargo Floorings to name a few. The store houses local brands too - but only after testing the quality. And since all the displayed items are directly sourced from the manufacturer they are sold at competitive prices.

For bulk building materials like cement etc the store has a shop-in-shop or booking counters for a number of companies. To prevent shop-lifting, all products are barcoded. As an added service, Arcus has tied up with HSBC to provide easy access to home loans. To make it a complete home buying experience, the company plans to add consumer durables to its list of items in a few months.

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