Swaminathan Balasubramanian
Kerala based‘Stories, a Global Home Concepts Store’, that imports and furniture from 19 countries like Italy, Germany, Turkey , Philippines, Indonesia, Thailand, Malaysia, China and Vietnam has launched its First store in Chennai at Palladium Mall in Phoenix Market City, Velachery.
This is the sixth store of Stories which already has presence in locations like Bangalore, Pune , Kochiand Kozhikode. According to the company, this store will serve the the requirements of Tamil Nadu customers which is currently served from both the Bangalore and Kochi Stores. The store is of 3 Thousand sqft.,is the first store from the organization being in a mall. “ Stories, unlike other furniture stores, sell ideas for home solutions not only asthetical but affordable by Indian consumers. There are huge number of consumers who travel to China to procure home furniture solutions with the assistance of architects. However, we are providing same product of same quality”, Haris KP, Chairman, Stories told ‘MediaNews4U’.
Speaking more on the marketing and communication campaigns, Stories is planning to make use of the print medium and outdoor activities. “Chennai is a key market for us. We had unvieled a store following a huge demand from the customers in Chennai. There were instances where we had flew the customers from Chennai to our Kochi unit. Till date outdoor advertising and print campaigns has been helping us in our other markets. Similarly we will be trying to reach out to our target audience through Newspapers”, says Firoz Lal, another spokesperson of the company who felt that if the Television ads become affordable they might look at planning it in their media budgets.
According to the company, BTL and Social media plays a key role in engaging customers. “We unleash the true potential of social media and we make time-to-time engagements through our social media channels. We get an opportunity to educate the audience on various aspect. For instance, many travel to China or other countries and buy an expensive home solutions which would be available in our store at half of the price. This cannot be explained better other than social media”, he says further adding that BTL activities will also play a key role in the decision making. Plans are also beefed up to create and send regular newsletters and other communications to the audience. According to him, there has been a special importance given for radio as a medium as they feel the ‘call to action’ and brand recall is high in Radio. Stories had also made use of the celebrity endorsement to the best possible ways who inaugurate the showrooms. Some of the celebrities who endorse the brand are Mamooty, Kajal Agarwal and Jackie Shroff.
Architects have key role to play in the decision making of the customers. “We are planning to reach out to the architect community through various means. We would like to have different format of activities which will help architects decide on the activities”, he further added. Going forward, Stories has plans to unveil store in Pune and is also planning for franchising format in India. Stories plans to expand its footprint significantly and is targeting to have 20 Stores across India by 2020.
