The Concept of the Neighbourhood Store.

The Concept of the Neighbourhood Store.

This though may sound to the urban ear a concept restricted to old generation small towns wherein everyone shopped at a local convenience store , it cant be farther from the truth especially in a city like Mumbai (Somehow I have to consciously allow myself to type that when I would love to still type Bombay , I have some very vivid , colorful and strongly opinionated comments for the “re-naming” of places – wasteful exercise to say the least , anyway shall leave that to another write up some time later for now the key word rather the PET word is “Neighborhood” )

With the city bursting at its seams with the daily expanding population that our city planners (do they exist at all ?? or is it as crazy a term as an “alien”) seem to be turning a totally blind eye and a deaf ear to , the whole concept of sky walks , metro stations in the making (don’t smirk I am quite optimistic and see them turn into a reality at least by 2012) ,bridges to shrink the city all don’t really seem to be having the desired effect , add to that the increasing amount of effort any individual has to put in to go to a particular place to procure daily needs is quite stressful in itself .

At this juncture its safe to say that the concept of a small (defined as anywhere between 2500 – 6000 sq ft) store is a very welcome concept. The whole point here being availability within reach and the blessing of a free home delivery service.

Expand this concept and stretch this to a radius of about 25-30 kms and we have what I call the “Neighbor-hood Mini Malls” , If anyone has already coined another term and added to the massive mountain of marketing jargon that floats around , them please excuse me but for now for ease of my article flowing smoothly and the proverbial “writers block” finally lifting like a dark grey cloud which is not anymore running a potentially sunny spring day , I will continue use of the new self coined jargon - “Neighbor-hood Mini Malls”.
Well , now that the christening is done with lets see what they are all about , well of course the biggest crowd pullers are the supermarket and multiplex , but add to that a small and comfy bookstore , a food court , an ATM , few “no – label” stores and some “pseudo” middle class brand stores (This is again a whole concept in itself – not so much self created but understood by me in a way a lay man would & allows for another short and not garrulous but very informative “Information Bulletin” kinda write up – yes , yes those very articles that pretend to be well researched but are unfortunately quite the old copy-paste ,run –of-the-mill every man can come up with fare !! ) and there we are !Of course the location , the correct “side “ of the road and decent amount of parking space are surely an added bonus .
Considering that the city planners (There ! again I the optimistic hopeful successful only in my head writer am imagining a committee that actually functions to think and act –hopefully – for public good and not just exist on paper for monthly , quarterly bi-annual tea parties !) have put some amount of thought process on un-avoidable rise of residential property in far off suburbs which are trying desperately to connect to the main backbone of Mumbai city , the whole concept of the “Neighbor-hood Mini Malls”. Is quite tantalizing to say the least .The potential in real estate and the bigger advantage of the availability of brands coming within reach is an option much worth exploring for today’s savvy marketers.
There’s much that be inked on this concept and paras written basis town planning, real estate rates , study of existing “Neighbor-hood Mini Malls” which will follow in due course .