Retail chain Shoppers Stop has closed its store at Ramee Mall in Chennai. Govind Shrikhande, Managing Director of Shoppers Stop Ltd, told BusinessLine the store’s performance was “not up to the mark, and hence we closed it.”
Shoppers Stop occupied 41,000 sq ft spread across three levels at the mall where it was the anchor tenant.
“After launching a store, we usually wait for a year or two to start pulling people. But, unfortunately, it did not happen at this store. After we launched this store, the Metro Rail work started and the entire stretch was dug up. There was hardly any footfall into the mall,” he said.
He also blamed the mall for not having offered any support structure such as cinema halls and sufficient number of eateries to attract customers. It was not even fully occupied, according to Shrikhande.
An official at the Mall, while refusing to give out any reason for the anchor tenant’s exit, admitted that the drop in footfall to the mall was a reason.
Attributing the drop in footfall to Metro Rail work, “which has thrown the traffic in that stretch out of gear”, he said the mall has been in talks with a couple of other retailers who were in the pipeline for the anchor space.
Shoppers Stop Ltd on Tuesday informed the stock exchange that it has closed its store, along with ‘Mothercare’ store and one ‘MAC’ store, which were inside the main store in the shop-in-shop format. With the closure of these stores, the company now has 72 “Shoppers Stop”, 42 ‘Mothercare’ and 35 ‘MAC’ outlets under its operations, the statement added.