Acer debuts retail store in B’lore

BANGALORE: South Asian PC manufacturing giant, Acer has ventured into the retail market in India by opening the first ‘Acer Mall’ in Bangalore. Firing on all cylinders, Acer plans to open 50 Acer Malls and Acer Point stores within the next 40 days. The proposed locations are at Coimbatore, Lucknow, Cochin, Chandigarh, Ahmedabad, Nagpur, Pune, Bangalore, Hyderabad and the four metros.

According to official statement released, every Acer store will carry the Aspire series of consumer PCs and the TravelMate notebook series. Retailers will have a choice in displaying other Acer categories such as TFT monitors, projectors and other multi-functional personal devices. The Acer Malls will also be the preferred retail distributors for the recently launched Acer Ferrari 3000 notebook.

Acer's retail stores will fall into three categories. The first will be the full shop or 'Acer Mall' which will comprise of Acer products and non-competing products. In the second category, one section of the store will display Acer products and in the third category, one corner of the store will exhibit Acer products. The second and third category stores will be known as 'Acer Points.'

Acer will provide the store owners with branding and visual merchandising for the stores in the form of standees, banners and external and internal signage. In addition, Acer has also engaged the services of a professional retail design company, Prime Site (a division of Mudra Communications Pvt. Ltd.), to provide uniform branding and merchandising across the stores. Prime Site has worked with several large and reputed companies such as Reliance Infocom and Samsung for their retail store design. Acer will also train store sales executives at every retail outlet under its Acer Certified Sales Professional (ACSP) program.

"Acer has always been at the forefront of offering consumers innovative quality products at competitive prices. Our entry into the retail market is a decision to build our brand presence and offer consumers increased and convenient access to an exciting range of Acer products. Our retail incentives to our partners are compelling and attractive and we expect to triple the number of stores by the end of 2004," said S. Rajendran, General Manager- Sales & Marketing, Consumer Product Group, Acer India (Pvt) Ltd.

Acer's foray into the retail market is a logical extension of the company's internal reorganization into a Consumer Product Group (CPG) division and Enterprise Products Group (EPG) division in March this year.

Acer will partner with its existing partners, who have the location primacy advantage, market share and acceptability in their market region for the remaining stores.