News: Indian retail success triggers bazaar for fixtures

(NDTV 12/04/2006) Mumbai - The secret behind any retail success is an attractive shop window and dressing up stores is turning out to be big business in India.

Every square feet of retail space requires investment worth at least Rs 2,000 on shop interiors, which works out to about $2 billion of shop display business across India.

The business of window dressing is attracting big foreign players as well and Chinese companies are taking the lead here.

Companies like Wuxi Risheng, Shenzhem Lucky, Shanghai Yonglan Buying Office and Xin Jiang Glass Manufacture Factory are hoping to bag a big chunk of business from India's retail industry.

• Europe's spotlight is also on light fittings inside the mega malls and stores. The big light fitting firms from Europe hope to clock 5-6 per cent growth in India.
  
  
• Danish lighting major Louis Poulsen is opening retail stores in key metros.
  
  
• And the Japanese are gunning for air conditioning and refrigeration orders, especially from Indian food retailers.

With most of the big stores by Reliance, Bharti and other foreign brands expected to open by end of this year, brisk sourcing has already started.

Going by the scale and size of the supply chain each is targetting, one could expect more and more foreign names to make it to Indian malls.