Meena Bazaar - New Delhi

Background:

Meena Bazaar is a prominent name for women’s ethnic apparels pan India. The brand made its humble beginnings in 1970, with one family run retail outlet in Chandni Chowk. The founder, Late Suresh Manglani had a vision of creating a brand with 100 retail outlets. In the year 1993, his youngest son, Anu Manglani The CMD of Meena Bazaar started his journey from two retail outlets: South extension Part 2 and Greater Kailash. In his early years of work, Mr. Manglani identified some significant challenges in the saree industry, which would make expanding into multiple retail outlets impossible. These included the fact that the industry is extremely disorganized, specifically no wholesaler, manufacturer or retailer had any structures in place. Additionally, Indian Women are Spoiled for choice i.e. they had a lot of variety to choose from and a lot of this variety was common amongst various retailers. Therefore, Mr. Manglani introduced technology in the industry and used it to organize all company data ranging from inventory to accounts. Furthermore, he worked with craftsmen and wholesalers to create unique designs which would differentiate Meena Bazaar’s product from its competitors. Up till today this practice of product exclusivity is maintained by the procurement team and sell in large volumes, thus fully exploiting the concept of Product life cycle. Today, the brand has zero debt, more than 600 employees, 70 EBO’s, and an international presence which are all run on the COCO model. With a rapid expansion plan in place, by the end of 2023 the brand aims to have 250 EBO’s which bolsters the companies vision statement: “Meena Bazaar, is the possibility of premium Indian women’s clothing in every wardrobe on the planet.”

Stakeholder Relationships:

Meena Bazaar’s team has undergone rigorous corporate training programs in conjunction with consultancies which work majorly with fortune 500 companies. This has inculcated a strong company culture of effective communication and powerful interpersonal relationships with one another. Mr. Manglani has significantly invested in his people and invites them to be part of this extraordinary journey, which is perhaps why some families have 3 generations of theirs working for Meena Bazaar. Every entity of the firm is carefully structured, with an organized hierarchy in place. This allows for smooth operations and strategic planning.

Meena Bazaar works closely with its vendor/partner firms, and unlike most companies organizes quarterly conferences with its partner firms. The idea of collective thinking and working in groups, brought out a new alliance between Meena Bazaar and its vendors. Aumre, is probably the only brand in the industry which brings a contemporary look of the saree industry into premium Kurtis. Given the direct economical relationship between vendors and buyers, Meena Bazaar’s perspective to its relationship with its vendors extends the boundaries of any conventional relationship of two business entities working with one another and these vendor relationships are treated more as partnerships.

Mr Manglani works daily with his sales teams and uses several tools to keep them motivated and operate on the simple principle of serving customers through extraordinary service and by providing them the product of the highest quality. Therefore, Meena Bazaar has established relationships with hundreds of thousands of customers, who have been loyal to the brand for decades and in some cases even generations.

Meena Bazaar, strongly believes in the principle of giving back to its partners, employees and customers and this is often seen at the end of the financial year which comprises of the brands largest sales events. The Flat 50% off on all stocks sale and Customer day. (https://youtu.be/8tBUR23WEEs)

Differentiation Strategies:

Although the Saree industry is a 15 billion dollar industry, it has been established above that the industry is extremely disorganized. Meena Bazaar adopts the following practices to keep itself differentiated from its competitors.