The Mall Gets Mauled

Ahmedabad gets yet another of its share of 'the largest' this week. Every new construction seems to be breaking the previous records of being the largest or the biggest. Specially in the mall arena. There seems no end to it. This one claims to be Gujarat's biggest mall. It must be. The floor space is pretty vast. And it has nice branded stores, with good exquisite collection of stuff. But the hype about this mall was the opening of Reliance Mart, the very first of the planned, Reliance Hyper-Market chain in India...

The opening of the mart was slated to take place on Independence Day. Mukesh Ambani and his wife, Nita Ambani had come for the inauguration ceremony. Two days before that, aggressive marketing started in papers, something that Reliance is famous for. And that included offering extremley tempting offers. So it was pretty obvious that a huge in-flux of crowd was expected. Cos the offers were so tempting for the common-man, not to resist them. They were literally giving away goods at dirt-cheap prices. And the goods were that of pretty good companies and brands.

Select the most happening place to open your store. Combine it with huge floor space, great offers and on top of that, have a big brand name name attached to your store. What else could you ask for ?? It was so very obvious half of Ahmedabad would be driven to the place on the day of inauguration. And that's what exactly had happened. Ahmedabadis are, as it is, known for their crazy antics, and in the recent years they have become so fond of shopping and mall-crawling, that this was something no typical 'Amdavadi' would miss. And so, an uncontrallable retinue thronged the place altogether. The parking lots were full. Leave that, the wide spaces on both the sides of the road were full of cars, as far as your eyes could see. There was a heavy traffic jam for an entire stretch of 1 and a half to 2 kms. The regular traffic had come to a standstill. It was literally mayhem. The store had to be closed down at 4 itself on seeing the situation getting totally out of control.

I mean, this is absolutely crazy. What's all the hoopla about?? Its just another good store!!! People were acting as if there was no tomorrow. And that this store has been opened only for a day, so they should go in today itself and make the best out of all the deals. The offers are supposed to last till the 30th. But who's gonna wait that long ?? Atleast no one here. I made a mistake of visiting the mall today, thinking that the initial craze must have died down by now. But it turns out that the situation was the same today also. There was a big queue to get into the store. The entry to the mall was all empty and one could easily get in, but to get into the store, there was a separate entry and there was a huge crowd standing in queue waiting to get into the store.

I decided to go inside for a mall crawl. When i came out, the situation was still the same. It seems, the next day on which people were free, after Independence Day, was the saturday to follow (which was today) and so, the remaining crowd had gathered today to finish off the pending ritual. I just came back home, deciding to go after a week or so when all the craze would have died down fully (atleast I hope it will). Or maybe go on some weekday at non-peak hours and check it out. No doubt i'd wanna visit that place, but I'm not so desperate so as to stand in queue for 20-25 minutes to just get in. And besides, when the store is crowded to this extent, then shopping isn't fun also. The store is here to stay. It aint going anywhere or it's not gonna close down.

But for our dear, crazy Amdavadis, there's no tomorrow. This has been the typicality of the people of Gujarat since beginning. Offer them anything in a sale price, or make them feel that they are actually saving a decent amount on some bargain, they will be driven in crowds and will buy that stuff in bulks. Then it's no wonder why Reliance Mart had a turnover of whopping 1.1 crore on the very first day. Rather, very first half-day i'd say, since the store closed down at 4 P.M.

It's the Amdavadis who make or break a store. It's such an indomitable spirit of Amdavadis, that a good store gets a taste of what real business is all about. I guess it's not just Ahmedabad that has such a passionate crowd. It's the case with any good city. Lets not forget what crazy things Americans did on the days when iPhone, Playstation 3, X-Box or any other awaited products were released. I remember incidents of Americans standing out of stores since 5 in the morning to be the first to lay hands on the new iPhone by Apple. Others were selling off their places in the queue for hundreds of dollars to others who had come late and were desperate to get in. So, it's not just our city that has a crazy crowd. Call it ludicrous behaviour, but then such a response form the consumers makes such companies and stores wanna offer better n cheap services and goods to the consumers even later on.

Even the stores enjoy doing business at such times. Which store wouldn't ??? It just increases their respect for the customers, who've shown them so much respect. It's a mutual equation that balances itself from both sides. We'd like to stay out of all this crazy behaviour, but then even we're benefitted from it later on, thanks to the enterprising crowd of our city. And also, we enjoy reading about it in the papers and hearing about it on the FM stations, and then muttering to someone besides us, how crazy people are!!! What's all the big deal ???

Big deal or no big deal, the mall craze is here to stay. Any new store opened by a big famous business house will definitely receive a warm response from the crowd. And why wouldn't it ?? They've transformed the way Amdavadis shop, added a feel good factor by deeply studying shopping therapy and its effect on the customer psyche, made consumers feel like the king, drastically raised the standard of living of people in the small towns n cities, and made accessible high quality goods (at moderately affordable prices), which were, at one time, only a luxury of the people of Metros.

No wonder the new Amdavadi is all ready to absorb more of the pampering... BRING IT ON...