Steel-ing the consumer experience!
Steel-ing the consumer experience!

The modular kitchen industry of India is a 6000 crores plus market and holds a great potential in the coming future. Many industry pundits have predicted that the industry is poised to grow particularly for branded products. Urbanisation and changing lifestyle will drive the demand for this prefabricated kitchen concept.
Speaking about the same with Retailer Media, Anuj Jain, CEO, JSL Lifestyle (Arttdinox) shares his learning about the evolving industry and how the future runways looks like. He also shared with us his plans towards the helm of the company.

Talk to us about the store and consumer experience you intend to offer?
Earlier the stores we had were only showing our product range i.e. tableware and kitchen. And this company is much more than those products. We were doing lots of products and projects. Most of the time we were getting feedbacks from consumers that they can’t see many products and we had to take them to production plant. Hence we decided to create a product experience zone for showcasing all the products we make, for instance – railings, plumbing, stainless steel gateways and vanity. For showcasing all those products we thought we needed larger space and that’s when we decided to shift to this store.

So can one conclude that this is more of an experience centre and less of a store?
Yes, it is an experience centre in any case because if you look at the products being displayed here, except from the tableware, nothing can be picked off the shelf. People have to experience the product before they purchase. So it’s more about experience rather than pure store.

Share some innovative categories introduced to this store that none other store has.
95 per cent of the products in here are the innovative categories which are new to the store except tableware and kitchen to an extent. Rest all categories like planters and railings were never displayed ever by us. Then PVD wall claddings. In fact the front façade in the store has been done in stainless steel and is up for sale.|
Not that someone can pick up the same façade but we can do the same for any consumer. The planters, vanity, wardrobes and even toilets have been displayed by us for the very first time. We are the biggest employers to Bombardier and hence a lot of interior of metro has been displayed here. Entire capability what we do and what we can do can be seen from this experience centre.

Talk us through the design of the store
Designing of the store has been done by Amit Chhabra including the office space as well. Element of designing is a combined effort of Amit Chhabra and our chairperson Deepika Jindal.

What are you Omni-channel strategies?
We have already bringing in a touch screen especially designed for us by 3M unique strategy that we are implying is that one can access internet on that screen and look at the product. Why people buy online is because of ease and discount. We don’t do discounting but if our product is on discount somewhere, we will offer same product at that discounted price in our store along with product experience. So this is how we want to interwove different channels for example online, retail, distribution.
We were into distribution sometime back, but now we are pulling out of it because somewhere we have found that if we don’t control the display, the products are not going to gain that desired display. So display is an important part of our Omni-channel strategy. We are covering that area through franchising route and we have 8 to 7 franchisee across India.

Don’t you think this strategy to offer product at discounted price listed on any portal may have any ramification on brand value?
Whole idea is the sustaining part, and even players such as Amazon, Flipkart, Snapdeal won’t sustain for very long in terms of burning out cash. For us being a manufactures, what we compromise sometimes is on margin but generally we don’t make loses.

What were the challenges while creating the consumer experience in this store?
So initially we had lot of open space (10,000 sq ft and the product – stainless steel is very cold so we didn’t know how to soften it up. So, the interiors team did a great job by creating spaces and partitions thereby making people move from zone to zone. And every partition has a different color element added to it. So the warmth has been lent through colours and putting lot of greens around it. The biggest challenge was to create that warmth in such a large space. The kind of accessorisation done around whole store - like carpets - is the elements which we don’t sell, but they add warmth to whole space.

Talk to us about the collaboration with Seimens & Whirlpool?
We have been working with Seimens and Whirlpool since beginning and they are the only collaborators we have to sell along with our kitchen. Though we don’t push our customers, they can buy anything and get installed. When it comes to selling from our place, it would be just these two brands, reason being after sales service which is just brilliant.

What potential do you see in tier II cities?
Right now franchising has not happened in many Tier II cities. There has been a challenge mainly because of our price points that are very metro centric. Going forward, we will have some pricing strategies to address Tier II and Tier III cities also, but right now we are very focused on building the brand first before getting into pricing. 

Share the variations in your product line
The kitchens do look expensive with a price tag to 30 lakh, but a kitchen set-up is directly related to the size of kitchen also. So, not every kitchen would fit-in the available space in tier II cities. It is not about the product or quality differentiation, it is about the differences in design. When it comes to tier II towns, the designers will be conscious to tell the customer about suitable kitchen design for the available sapce, and hence the whole difference will be on design and not product line.
In tier I, customer are well informed and want a lot of tall units, storage spaces and a lot of lifestyle around the kitchen, whereas in tier II, people would want a functional kitchen. Once it’s functionality versus all opulence, the price is to drop in that case.

Do you have any new initiatives coming up?
We are tying up with renowned designers including the likes of Suneet Verma, Sahil Sarthak. We are soon going big in home décor and furniture section. 

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