Global bathroom solutions brand taps India

Retailer caught up with Serhan Ateş Yağız, India Country Manager, Eczacıbaşı Building Products Division, to know more about his investments in India.  

Why India?We aim to be among the top 3 global brands of our sector in India with VitrA branded products, currently exported to more than 75 countries. We have brands such as VitrA, Artema, and Intema Kitchen. Currently, we have 16 manufacturing sites in Turkey, Germany, France and Russia. We have defined India as our 6th strategic market in addition to these countries.

India being the second most populous country and having a construction market among the largest top 10 has influenced our decision. With our products, our strong local organisation, our distribution channels, and our brand investment, we will be achieving this target. The market in India, and its volume, is huge. In Turkey, our market share is 35 per cent. And the volume we are trying to capture in India is almost five times of the Turkish market. Also, people can today spend a little bit more. They have become brand conscious, so that is a positive sign.

Any initial challenges you faced here?

I think one can never rely on information one gets in India. One person says something; another would come up with their own figures. It’s not accurate and reliable. We trust on BRG reports, they give you a good idea about the Indian market.

Tell us more about your company and its brand, VitrA.

These are good signs for a global brand like us, who sell in more than a 100 countries. VitrA is one of the brands under the building products division of Eczacıbaşı Group. Under the umbrella group, we have 41 companies. We manufacture products under the VitrA brand and sell to global markets. We manufacture tiles, sanitary ware, accessories, bath-tubs, vanities, etc. Whatever you look for in a bathroom, we will have it. VitrA manufactures 5 million units of sanitary ware, 350,000 bathtubs, 370,000 units of bathroom furniture, 3 million faucets and 2.5 million bathroom accessories every year. Some 50 per cent of production is exported to over 75 countries worldwide for sale in 150 exclusive showrooms and 2,000 sales points across the world.

Are you experiencing a consumption pattern that is new and different here?

We know our global competition quite well. We were never localised. When it comes to India, the mid-up-section is what we are focusing on. We have a price range from nine thousand to 90 thousand, and have 16 product ranges in between. The brand awareness could be one of the problems, because in terms of consumers, we never put ourselves into marketing. Now, we are opening up on that front as well. We can’t do any marketing until we had a good dealership.We are ready in the metros, especially Delhi, because we have ten showrooms here. We are also working with architects to improve the quality of the products. One cannot compete with price. Our brand has set a good standard in many European companies. One of the qualifications to be among the top is design, and we follow that quality standard.

Was it easy to jump into the Indian market?

We did a competition analysis some years ago in India. Some local players entered India with a partner. When you look from the outside, India is not an easy market to jump into. You should always think about getting launched with a company that is settled here. We tied up with Kajaria and we thought they had a big distribution network to help us get to major parts of India.We did business together for three years, but later on we decided to follow a different path. In 2014, we decided to hire our own managers, area and regional. So now we have our own team in India.

Tell us more about the tie-ups with dealers and your distribution network.

VitrA cannot be sold by every dealer. He should have a taste and an attitude to sell. We have somewhere around 60 dealers pan-India. We are covering all the metros and some Tier II cities. We are now shifting our head office to Mumbai, from technology to back office, etc. We don’t have a national distributor, we have 10 distributors on different points. That increases our service level. We are happy with a distribution network.We did not bring all our collection to India. But being a distributor, we have to have some real good products. The dealers select the products they like according to Indian sensibilities. In designer product categories, we have all the products in India.

The word is that you are opening an orientation centre in Mumbai. Is that true?

We are going to have a bigger space for the orientation centre in Mumbai. We will display our portfolio there, and that’s a first in India. We have too many things to show, which we could not do it until now. We will have our own display centres in Mumbai in two months from now.