Licensing offers a direct marketing medium to brands

Voylla, the fashion jewelry brand launched their exclusive outlet retailing products under Dare by Voylla - the brand for men’s jewelry & accessories. in an interaction with License India, Vishwas Shringi, Founder & CEO, Voylla spoke about the collection and how the brand is making the most through its association with Viacom18 for soap operas on Colors TV.

What made you think of a stores exclusively dedicated to men’s jewelry range?

We started piloting the project year and half ago. We initially started online and received very good response in that. when we started our offline journey it was primarily for women. We also kept a small window for men's collection and there we started getting queries for men’s collection. Seeing the growth online and seeing the traction growing we realised that we need to have broader presence for mens collection in the store as well. However if we were to increase that collection in the existing Store format that is women centric, it would have been very conflicting because space is a constraint. It entirely made sense to pilot the men's collection project separately. We did a pilot project and after its success we went ahead with opening an exclusive men’s store under the brand name DARE. This is the first DARE store in India and going forward we have plans to launch few more such stores. Today we have 240 retail touch points for primarily driven for women. Going forward I want to see same number of stores for mens as well.

Do you think you will find a potential market for men's jewelry in Tier 2 or tier 3 cities?

Definitely! Today India has a very young population spread across which television and internet being the major influencers. People want whatever is there on the screen. People want to look good and accessorize and men are gradually opening up for that. I will give you an analogy. A decade ago there was no concept for men’s salon, now there are unisex salons where there are more men than women at any given point of time.

You had an agreement with Viacom18. Is that valid for DARE as well?

The agreement we have with Viacom18 is irrespective of gender and was specifically for any of the soap operas airing on Colors TV, where all the jewelry will be done by Voylla. It made sense to start with women’s range, but we have also launched a line for men under the same sub-brand Navrang and we would increase the strength there also. So whatever we see for Voylla will be reflected in all our sub-brands.

Do you see such associations helping brads in long run?

These kind of associations are useful for two purpose: TV audiences come to know about our association with Viacom, hence increasing awareness about the brand and adding credibility to it. Second, you get a direct marketing medium on TV. Having said that, the onus is still on the brand that has to take product to different retail touch points and that’s where our retail presence is very helpful as creating inspiration and then creating logistics which is what our retail footprint allows.

What has been the average ticket size offline?

Our offline ticket price is in the range of 1600 to 1700 INR which is much higher than what you see online. We have different lines which are collection under same umbrella including Narvang, Studio, DARE.

What more association are you looking at as of now?

These kind of association will be a part of our journey. Going forward, there are a lot of movies releasing and now a days there are opportunities to do something very specific with movies. As a brand our focus is to offer great products to the consumers. The medium and avenues may be different but our forte remains the same – exclusivity, affordability and quality. We may also have association with cricket teams to have jewelry range for them. Earlier we have done cricket related accessories.

Would you be looking for Bollywood IPs or the ones from Hollywood?

Given a chance it would be a mix of Bollywood and Hollywood as the former is mass puller. We had opportunity to get Disney products live online which was a small pilot. Definitely we would look for properties in international domain as well.