Amore Crosslink emphasises on skilled sales force for growth

Amore Crosslink Inc., an associate of Amore Jewels, delves in providing customised personnel solutions at retail level, for the jewellery industry, and recently launched its new programmes and certificate courses at a seminar – ‘Modern Retailing 2011 & Beyond – Opportunities and Challenges’. The seminar was organised for the jewellery sector in Delhi on April 30, 2011, with the scope of discussing the importance of retail as one of the largest sectors to be in the Indian economy, and the much needed upgardation of skills of sales to match such growth.

Speakers included Mr Shanti Barmecha, CMD, ACI, Mr Nitin Parab, CEO and Evangelist, H.H.S.A.R. PV Chaturvedi Swami, Chief Advisor, Dr Srini Srinivasan, Advisor, Ms. Gauri Gupta of National Skills Development Corporation (NSDC) . The keynote address at the seminar was provided by H.H.S.A.R. PV Chaturvedi Swami. The seminar hinted at a new mantra -‘Invest in People’.

Amore Crosslink Inc., helps showrooms attract the right people and helps the showroom owners strategise the right role for their existing staff, besides training them into non-verbal communication and clearly defined roles. Mr Nitin Parab, ACI’s behavioural scientist and human coach, pointed out the current retail set up lacking enough skills, saying, “ Our research found that in most of the jewellery businesses in this industry, only four percent of the employees have leadership potential while 62 per cent do not want to take leadership”. There are estimated to be around 3.5 lakh retail jewellery outlets in India, mainly run by small family owned businesses, employing less than five employees sans professional training.

“We expect a severe shortage of nearly five million skilled people in the jewellery trade by 2022,” informed Ms. Gauri Gupta. She further said that current growth figures hint at the domestic jewellery industry heading for a 50 per cent rise in retail turnover at Rs. 112,000 crore in 2013, and organised retail which at present is a small part of the entire basket is also growing.

Dr Srini Srinivasan, ACI’s Advisor and Research scholar and Retail specialist, commented that such a scenario of high expected growth and majority of the retail industry being unorganised, ‘ shall inevitably be hit by corporates, better managed with deeper financial resources and muscle power”, overshadowing the smaller players in the industry. He further said that ‘it is possible for you to co-exist, provided you professionalise’, advising the smaller industry players to streamline all retail processes and professionalise the business if they wanted to survive in a challenging market and withstand competition. The advantage for the smaller players was that 80 per cent of business in the jewellery industry happened within a two kilometre radius and they could choose to be close to their customers provided they invested in their people who became the expression to carry their brand forward.

Amore Crosslink Inc offers vocational training and educational programs for front line staff, on topics such as - Introduction to Retail, Creating the Retail Sales Personality, a Basic and Advanced Retail Management Program for students aspiring to join Modern Trade Retail and for professionals already in the trade. It also offers four types of service verticals including training links, Human Resource Links, Corporate Links, and Institutional Links.