Vivek C. Pande is the CEO of Khimji Luxury and Lifestyle group – that retails a plethora of world famous luxury and lifestyle brands in Oman though its Khimji Luxury and Lifestyle outlets. In an
interview with Oman Vistas, he opines the global recession hasn’t really affected their business. Excerpts:

Luxury segment unaffected

In all honesty, we have not been impacted at all by the global recession. Impact may have been immense on white goods industry, but the product mix that we carry at Khimji Ramdas is that of luxury goods like cameras, perfumes, crystals, jewellery, watches, sunglasses, writing instruments, leather products, linen etc which have not been affected.

In last five years, we have been growing at a compounded growth rate of anywhere between 15 to 20 per cent over the pervious year. What has happened in first six months of 2009 is that no double digit growth has taken place but sales are still marginally up over last year. I was pleasantly surprised, because we were seeing the sluggish trend world

wide and so, we were prepared for the worst; but all the same, hoping for the best!

Focused towards productivity

The warning sign made us prepared in terms of becoming very focused towards productivity and rationalization. We have consolidated rather than expanded by opening new outlets. I think
in retrospect, it was a wise decision in anticipation of global slow down. So we were able to control costs.

Oman has been less effected than Dubai, because of the tourism aspect there. And, as a fact the lay offs have been very minimal. We have not asked even a single employee to leave, which is something that makes us very proud. We never even thought about it or discussed it as one of our measures to face the slow down; as firstly there wasn’t much of an impact and secondly our organization culture at Khimji Ramdas is such that layoffs are not considered as an acceptable measure to meet challenges. We understand that we are dealing with human beings and we cannot be so harsh.

The overall sales are not down, but I would say, there has been a shift in consumer buying. For instance , take Nikon digital cameras, we have sold more of digital compact cameras than the more expensive Nikon SLRs. You could say, we anticipated a change in consumer behaviour and and resultant change in perception of value; and ordered our product mix accordingly. I must add, our strategy seems to have paid off beautifully.

Optimism about the forthcoming festive
season

I am an incorrigible optimist. I am sure the forthcoming festive season would be wonderful and there will be a big spike in spending as during Eid, basically Omani citizens relate to each other very closely with strong family values. Traditionally, during Eid the consumption of food items increases, and sales at our Pizza Hut outlets are three times more than the normal sales. And, in the last two weeks before Eid everyone spends lavishly on buying gifts. I hope from there onwards the sales should just continue to increase!