R Sriram, the former founder CEO of Crossword, India's biggest book retailer : -
n the late-1980 s, a college student threw caution and a destined engineering degree to the winds and landed a job with the Landmark bookstore in Madras. He thought he would last there for all of three months. But as the line goes 'Life is what happens to you while you're busy making other plans' , and he went on to build one of India's most successful bookstore chains. In the case of R Sriram, the former founder CEO of Crossword, fact is stranger than the fiction that lines the bookshelves at Crossword.
Today, the chain that he helped set up is perhaps India's biggest book retailer . Before Crossword, there were wellknown bookshops — HigginBothams in Bangalore, Strand in Mumbai, Om in Delhi to name but a few. However none of them had a national presence.
To be successful, therefore, a national chain would have to reinvent and remarket the very idea of a bookshop as consumers saw it. Luckily for Sriram, he found a backer for the concept in publishers India Book House putting the seed capital and more importantly give him real estate in the form of their vacant first floor office space in Mumbai at Mahalaxmi.
It set up dedicated sections for children, a concept that was unheard of in the bookstores that were around. That risk paid off, with children contributing about 35 per cent of sales and 25 per cent of the volumes. The store also took some innovative steps like keeping the children's section at the farther end of the store.
Full article in the link below.
http://articles.economictimes.indiatimes.com/2009-02-04/news/27651886_1_crossword-bookstore-chain
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