Breaking boundaries

Corporate gifting is picking up pace in the market with companies not just concentrating on festive season but also on various rewards and recognition. Swiss Military India, the Indian arm of the Switzerland based company, plans to leverage every platform to expand their business. From being a B2B business and now moving on with their e-commerce portal, Vishal Malik, Country Head, Swiss Military India, shares his plans further in to the market through B2B and retail.

Gunjan Piplani: Why is e-retail becoming the hot spot in the time of festivities?

Vishal Malik (VM): Firstly, this is the time when you can expect the peak traffic and secondly e-retail offers the best solution for the customers to pick and choose by sitting at the work place or homes.

GP: You are working with a lot of other e-retailers apart from your own portal. Who are they?

VM: We are working with 99labels, flipkart, fashionand you, inshop. And the price remains more or less the same. At times purely because their own marketing tools, there is a slight variation. One model 24x7 and other is flash sale where products are there for some amount of time. But we try that there is no clashes between the websites.

GP: What are the product categories you offer and how will you be expanding on those lines?

VM: We offer the maximum category of products possible like writing instruments, watches, travel accessories, etc. And we will soon be expanding the list. We plan to include products exclusively for women and some products which will lie in the unisex category.

GP: How are you doing the marketing and promotion of your brand?

VM: The marketing of the products happens through offers and gifting products. Unique price offerings and media coverage are some more marketing tools we are using to promote our products.

GP: What are the formats where you are working currently?

VM: We started with the B2B format where we were catering the corporate clients. There was a big market available there. The second format is e-retail where we have ventured recently and currently we are planning to focus on this as this allows us to serve the individual customers as well. We are also planning to enter the physical store format but only after proper planning. That will happen primarily through MBO’s.

GP: What is your brand's USP?

VM: Our USP is that we offer different and unique products at the price points where once Chinese players were dominant. You may find unique products in the market but the price which you have to pay is very steep. Consumers will still spend on their personal needs but when it comes to gifting they are a bit price conscious. We allow them to be different yet not so expensive with our price points and this is our USP.