Continuing their drive to open elite wine shops in all the city’s leading malls, TASMAC threw the doors open to their brand-new elite wine shop at the Ten Square Mall in Koyambedu on Monday morning. What was truly surprising, beyond the lack of clamouring tipplers that the CMBT area is infamous for, was that this was the first shop in the 1.50 lakh sqft mall to actually open.
“The food court, supermarket and other shops are expected to be open in the first few months of 2014, but the wine shop will be functional from today,” said a mall employee. This comes almost immediately after the elite shop at Ramee Mall in Teynampet was opened earlier this week and the store at Phoenix Marketcity was opened on November 24.
The liquor marketing corporation’s plans to set up elite stores retailing expensive brands targeting an upmarket clientele was floated at the end of 2011.
The shop in Spencer Plaza, the first inside a mainstream mall, was set to be converted and mall owners were approached to give them space to set up similar stores.
Walking through the empty floors of the almost-finished mall, finding the elite TASMAC outlet isn’t difficult - practically all the activity points toward the shop on the second floor.
Unlike the first shop to be opened at the low-key Alsa Mall in September, this store is way more aesthetically designed. “We have a lot more space here (3,000 sqft) and we have tried to make it a pleasant experience for the customers who want premium liquor in the area,” said a TASMAC official who was there for the store opening. As with the other stores, liquor there costs between `500 and `16,000 and is laid out on wooden racks, like stores in Bangalore and Goa.
With more women and shoppers having access to liquor purchases in malls, revenue from the shops has been rising. Though TASMAC officials were unwilling to let on much about the sales volume at the elite stores, an employee of UB group said, “The sales in the shops at Phoenix and Alsa have hit `4.5 lakh and `2.5 lakh last weekend and that is significant on just word-of-mouth publicity. This will go up next year,” he said.