Clearly, the Health & Glow concept is smelling of roses. It started with a clear brief to provide the customer a range of goods in health and beauty (including your regular pharmaceutical requirements). Now, it is so popular that for some manufacturers, it has become a launch pad.

The painstaking efforts in introducing various categories, and widening the range of old ones by introducing new brands, the promotional efforts from time to time, the Health &Glow special offers which take various products on rotation, has paid off. The customer base has doubled in six months.

The retail chain which has launched the sixth shop in Chennai on Friday--in addition to two outlets in Bangalore--is discovering that each outlet is now taking less and less time to break even. ``It used to take us 12 to 18 months for an outlet to break even, but now it just takes six months,'' said CEO Oscar Braganza.

The brand image of the retail chain is now well established. The RPG-Dairy Farm International joint venture now proposes to open 16 Health & Glow outlets by year-end in Chennai and Bangalore before moving on to other cities.

The turnover has increased to Rs 825 per sq. feet of space per month even in the slow season (summer months see peak sales). The average billing size has also increased from Rs 125 to Rs 165 per person, which is an encouraging figure for retailers, Braganza said.

For Health & Glow, the challenge lies in dealing with a range of manufacturers forprocurement. It currently deals with 179 big and small manufacturers to ensure the largest variety of beauty care and health care products under one roof. The company buys only FDA approved food products and its essential oils are all lab-tested and certified for purity.

While the cosmetics section (skin and hair care) accounts for 50 per cent sales and pharmaceuticals 20 per cent, the other products are rapidly becoming popular. New categories introduced in the last few months: herbal brands in the health food, diabetic specials, slimming aids, imported fragrances (the genuine Nina Ricci at duty-free customs shop rate), hair accessories (bands, brushes etc), photo rolls and batteries with developing facility, and exercising gadgets.

There are promo campaigns for the pharma counter too--perhaps not as exciting as beauty care, but meaningful nevertheless. For example, Health & Glow conducted a public camp for injections of hepatitis B at subsidised rates.