Consumer durable retailers see no supply constraints

Indian consumer durable retailers see no supply constraints due to Japan’s earthquake and tsunami that hit the north of the country on Friday. Most key retailers like Next, e-zone, Croma and Reliance Digital have no intimation from the local units of Japanese consumer electronic and durable makers concerning supply issues.

Regional players like Vivek’s in Chennai and Sony Mony in Mumbai also said the same thing.

K S Raman, director at the Videocon-promoted Next Retail, said, “We don’t see a problem. That is because much of the consumer electronic manufacturing has actually moved out of Japan owing to the high cost of production there. It is countries such as Thailand, Malaysia, Indonesia and China that manufacture Japanese products now for the Asian markets.”

Manoj Kumar, chief executive officer, consumer durables & electronics, Future Group, Ajay Baijal, president and chief executive officer, Reliance Digital, and Ajit Joshi, chief executive and managing director, Infiniti Retail, which runs the Croma chain of stores, agreed. “We don’t see a problem in the foreseeable future,” Baijal said. “Their planning and forecasting are good. They do it much in advance. So, at least for the next few months, I don’t see a problem,” Joshi said.

Japanese companies operating in India include Sony, Panasonic, Toshiba, Hitachi, Canon, Nikon and Daikin.

While most Japanese companies have been slow in setting up manufacturing operations in India, a few like Panasonic are taking the local market seriously in terms of production. Panasonic is set to plough in over Rs 1,000 crore in the next three years to set up, among other things, its first manufacturing plant in the country, which will come up in Haryana.

Arch-rival Sony, on the other hand, has no such plan at the moment. “We continue to import and distribute in the country,” Sony India Managing Director Masaru Tamagawa said. Due to this, its dependence on plants in China and Malaysia grows, say industry experts. “Even Panasonic has a plant in Malaysia, and so does Toshiba,” said a Panasonic executive.