Design Solution eyeing Delhi, Mumbai airports

Los Angeles: When airport retail started to take off a few years ago, brands viewed the stores as a way to snatch a few extra bucks from travelers with time to kill.
Now, though, it’s a soaring business.
Airport retail generated $34 billion in sales in 2007, up from $29 billion in 2006. Luxury goods accounted for 35.5 percent of those sales, a 16.6 percent increase over 2006, according to research service Generation Databank. That’s why Bally, Prada, Ferragamo and Chloé, among others, are all going along for the ride.
For many brands, India is at the top of the wish list, partly because its elite consumers are used to shopping in airports. “India’s own domestic middle class has been growing at a phenomenal rate, but the quality and amount of retail downtown never caught up,” said Robbie Gill, an architect and a director of The Design Solution, a London firm that plans and designs airport retail. “Indians had to travel to buy it.”
So now the market is coming to India. Gill’s firm is preparing retail plans for three new terminals in the Delhi and Mumbai airports, one opening in December and the others in 2010. “There will be a large luxury component,” he said.
A change in airport ownership is also boosting commerce in India, Gill said. “Private entities bought both airports, so the whole face of Indian airport travel will be transformed.” But he doesn’t want to transform it into a luxury paradise. “We’ll have a design area dedicated to craft, with Indian retailers. It will be different from what you see in the rest of the world. You’ll see the richness of a culture through its retailers,” he explained. “[The luxury concentration] is not a problem for sales, but it might be in the future because if you replicate the same names worldwide, there’s no sense of difference.
25/08/08 Anne-Marie Otey/Footwear News, NY

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Categories: Airports Aug 2008, Foreign Aug 2008