• Investment World
• eWorld
• Brand Line
• Mentor
• Life
• Brand Quest
• The New Manager
• BL Club
• Smartbuy

Stocks

• Quotes
• SE Diary
• Scoreboard
• Open-End Mutual Fund

Cross Currency

• Rates
  
  

Shipping

• Ports
  
  

Archives

• Yesterday
• Datewise
• Resources
• In Focus
• In Depth
• Events 2007

Group Sites

• The Hindu
• The Hindu ePaper
• Business Line
• Business Line ePaper
• Sportstar
• Frontline
• The Hindu eBooks
• The Hindu Images

Our Bureau

Chennai, Sept. 25 In Madurai, an experiment is under way to help standalone retail shops withstand competition from the emerging, large retail chains such as Reliance and Subhiksha.

The Tamilnadu Chamber of Commerce and Industry (TCCI) is getting together owners of some 500 retail shops and putting them through a course to do up their businesses.

“As the first step, we have told them that they should have products in neat shelves with names and price tags and computer billing,” says Mr S. Rethinavelu, President of the Chamber.

The next step is to ask them do up their shops with common interiors and colours. The third step is to give a common logo to all of them.

This way, the 500-odd retail outlets will be owned by different people but will still be a chain. Mr Rethinavelu also speaks of common procurement of products to keep prices down.

“This is the only model for retailing that will work,” Mr Rethinavelu said, observing that most of the large retail chains were not making money.

The TCCI is the largest industry body in Tamil Nadu, with over 7,000 members. The Chamber has announced the setting up of an office in Chennai to service its members in the northern districts of the State.

Outlining some of the Chamber’s activities, Mr Rethinavelu said it had set up a Chamber Arbitration Tribunal to provide arbitration services to the industry. The chamber will provide the infrastructure as well as a panel of arbitrators to choose from. The decision of the arbitrator(s) is legally binding on the parties, he said.

Mr Rethinavelu said the power situation in the southern districts was very bad, with power cuts of over eight hours each day, and that too, at different parts of the day. As a result, manufacturing units are finding it practically impossible to run a contiguous 12-hour shift.

Mr Rethinavelu, who is also the Managing Director of Super Polytex (P) Ltd, said process industries such as those that make plastic articles find it impossible to run their units because the machines take about two hours to heat up to operational levels.

The units lose productive time when the machines heat up afresh every time the power comes back. As a result many industries in the southern districts are closing down.

The Tamilnadu Chamber welcomes both the Sethusamudram and the Titanium di-oxide project of Tata Steel Ltd. Mr Rethinavelu and Mr N. Jegadeesan, Secretary of the Chamber, said the Sethusamudram project would make Tuticorin a major transhipment port in the region and would contribute to the development of the southern districts.

If the breach of the ‘Ramar bridge’ is a concern, there are alternative routes, Mr Rethinavelu said.

He also said the Chamber felt the Titanium di-oxide project was excessively politicised. “The people are willing to sell their lands as it would take them several years to make the kind of money that the Tatas are offering,” he said.

He said that just as the Government gives ‘tax holiday’ for new industries, there should also be ‘labour holiday’ for new industries, say, for five years. This would give the entrepreneurs sufficient time to build up their business.

“Let all the labour laws become applicable at the end of the five years,” Mr Rethinavelu said.

More Stories on : Retailing | Industry Associations | Tamil Nadu

Article E-Mail :: Comment :: Syndication :: Printer Friendly Page

Copyright © 2008, The Hindu Business Line. Republication or redissemination of the contents of this screen are expressly prohibited without the written consent of The Hindu Business Line