field trip - brand management

F I E L D V I S I T T O A R E A A R O U N D O A S I S M A L L , S H E I K H Z A Y E D R D , D U B A I

2014

FIELD TRIP Brand Management

PRAJAKTA TALATHI

SP JAIN SCHOOL OF GLOBAL MANAGEMENT

Field Trip

Prajakta Talathi – GSEP13CMM031 Page 1

On a lovely morning of Thursday, 24th July 2014 we GMBA Marketing students set out to explore the

real world around us and not the guchi poochi world of just soaps, shampoos etc. Unaware of the

day ahead and cursing the heat, we set out on our half day trip.

Destination – 1: Organic Foods and Café

Organic Foods and Café is a family run company that runs organic supermarkets and cafés selling

fresh organic and biodynamic food, supplements, skincare, cosmetics, baby items and household

cleaning products.

We were amazed by the prices in the supermarket, which were for us around 300% higher than

what we usually pay. After window shopping for couple of minutes, we were greeted by the store

manager, a very cheerful and “happy-to-help” lady. My first encounter with Internal Branding that

day! She explained us the concepts of Biodynamic, Organic Food, Non-Animal tested products etc.

She also told us about how they manage their inventory, forecast demand and promote their

products. She also spoke about certain limitations they face due to time taken by cheaper modes of

commute, cargo shipment and also due to limited availability of organic products. She further spoke

about the excellent value chain that they share. Thanks to my fellow mates and interested Q&A that

we all were enlightened with the insights of Organic Food.

After around 15 minutes of brainstorming, we continued with our tour inside Organic Foods. To my

surprise, there were so many different brands and products such as Nativ, Bob’s Red Mills,

Barnhouse, Andechser, etc. in the food category and Bentley, Argantus, Dr. Hauschka, etc. in the

beauty care category. The category, product list and brand list is pretty much exhaustive. Organic

Foods and Café sells anything and everything that a person might require to meet his daily needs

especially in a healthy and environmentally friendly way. Oh! By the way, unlike other supermarkets

even meat is fresh and organic!

Whether it was a perception or fact, but we could make out the difference in the products. The

fragrance in cosmetic and beauty care products, aroma of fresh food and dry fruits etc. and the

wooden interiors truly gave a feeling of natural world. Organic Foods definitely housed a variety of

products and different brands and it helped us in understanding the growing demand for such

products. I felt that it is not just the company’s responsibility to work on the triple bottom line, but

in this ecosystem, it is also the responsibility of an individual to look after his health and well-being

and after the planet at large!

Field Trip


To our surprise, as contrary to our initial opinion, we did find certain products not that costly, maybe

by now we were on the reception side of Value-Based pricing and in our minds the value of organic

products had increased by a substantial level. Complying with the regulations during Ramadan, we

couldn’t easily consume our shopping and so we set on to

Destination 2 – Wolfi’s Bike Shop

Woohoo..!! The minute I entered this shop, Shahji Bhai told me that you get cycles worth 100,000

dirhams here and I didn’t know how to react. If I had felt Organic Foods expensive then I was in a no

comments state here! In my childhood owning a Hercules cycle was a moment of pride and riding it

everywhere I went was truly a status symbol for me. Next cycle I rode was Lady Bird within Infosys

Campus and now here I was!

Wolfi’s was started in 2002 in Dubai by a passionate and enthusiast cyclist and the shop is named

after him. It started as a small shop in one corner and now is has grown to 3600 sq ft store and

houses millions of dirhams worth cycles and cycle parts and accessories. You get nuts and bolts

worth 800 dhs; seat covers from 850 dhs to no idea of the upper range. Minimum readymade cycle

which I saw was around 15K dhs which surprisingly didn’t look so expensive anymore. Couple of

brands I remember and Scott, Avid, Continental, Sigma, Polar, Kask, Garmin etc.

Here at Wolfi’s you will find “Everything for Bikes!” The best part was the dedicated employees who

knew that we weren’t going to shop anything from the shop and yet helped us know and understand

different aspects of creating a cycling experience. One employee guided us through the store and

explained us what they do and how they do; about cyclist enthusiast and health and environment

conscious people who come and shop there. I checked with one employee about how the cycle

measurement and bio measurement machine works and how do they assemble a masterpiece from

it; he gave me step-by-step information and now I with little training and guidance I guess I too can

start working there!

Dubai is one of the most progressive and growing of the emirates in the UAE and Wolfi’s Bike Shop is

keeping pace with the burgeoning cycling community. With increasing number of health and

environment conscious people, Wolfi’s has a tremendous growth opportunity and with the people it

has in its family, it sure has enormous potential. And why not, Wolfi’s has got a super-endorser, Mr.

Sheikh Mohammad himself, who shops his cycle from here!

Mesmerized we continued our trip to…

Field Trip


Destination 3 – Tactical Trading

Tactical-Trading has a very extensive range of quality products and brands that is being continually

updated. It has 3 types of products: Tactical, Outdoor and Industrial.

From lights to bag pack, from shoes to outfits everything you get here. Brands available are Oakely,

SWAT, Otis, Redman, Camo, Silva, Yates etc. Stanley, Swarovski, Omega etc. I was completely spell

bound by the variety of knives. After trailing around the whole store and checking out the different

amusing things like light pen, strings, torch key chains etc. I had spent a whole 15 minutes at the

knife counter while few tired friends of mine were resting on the couch.

There were apparels and shoes and lot of other stuffs, especially army stuff which was quite fun to

see. But what struck me the most is the branding of such stores. Because the apparels and many of

the other things out there were pretty much what you get outside and yet some of them had the

value pricing and brand pricing.

Personally after visiting the previous two stores, this store did not catch that much of my interest.

But it was an experience where with the Brand name and putting right things at right place, certain

normal merchandise can get huge returns.

We soon wrapped up our expedition at the Tactical Trading retail store and were heading off to

college. But meanwhile we had a chance to sneak a peek at the Harley Davidson store. Dumb

founded that we were, we clicked a few pictures and boarded our bus. On the way, we realized that

we still had some time and so we alighted and headed towards Daiso.

Destination 4 – Daiso

Field Trip


Daiso has a range of over 100,000 goods, of which over 40 percent are imported goods, many of

them from China. Many of these are own-brand goods.

Daiso often uses such locations as previous pachinko parlours for its retail outlets. They spend a lot

of money on shelving and fixtures to help the stores compete with more high-end retailers. The

stock of items retailed at each shop is varied frequently in order to increase repeat customers. Daiso

categorizes all its own-brand items on sale using the morpheme za (ザ), the Japanese representation

of the English word "the", plus a category.

It was a typical cute retail store where you get all decorative stuff plus cutlery and every other stuff.

We shopped couple of things, mainly soveniors to take back home. And the best part for any

student.. it was a Dollar store rather a 7 dirhams store.

My Key Take Away The most important thing that I learned was that there is a market for anything and everything, you

should just know how to put your things forward. Branding can happen at any level no matter how

small or tangible-intangible that thing is.

Things really aren’t that expensive once you know the value attached with it or once you have your

emotions attached with it.

All the stores that we visited were largely for certain niche market, except for the Diaso store. And

hence I called all these visits as Destinations because it is a paradise for the niche segment and

destination buyers.