Retail Gem(strata)

Zoya recently unveiled couturier Raghuvendra Rathore’s second collection, ‘Gold of Narlai’. Here, Sandeep Kulhaali talks about his Luxury Brand and the company's future plans.

Vrinda Oberai (VO): Tell us about Zoya? What is the price range, product range and the target audience? How many stores you have at present and what are the future plans? What is the growth rate of luxury industry? How long will it take to be called a mature market for luxury?

Sandeep Kulhaali, VP (SK): We have been in this business for the last 15 years and Tanishq has emerged as a favourite brand of the masses. So, we thought of venturing into an exclusive line and this is how Zoya was born. The price range varies from 70,000-80,000 and goes upto 5 lakhs approximately, thus making it fall in the affordable range. Our target audience for Zoya remains to be the high end consumers with high disposable incomes and high net worth individuals who travel extensively and don’t mind experimenting.

We have a limited edition and currently concentrate only on Delhi and Mumbai.

The jewellery industry is a fragmented industry. It is estimated to be a 21 billion dollar industry, out of which 4 billion dollar is the diamond jewellery. Also, bulk of the industry is the traditional jewellers.

India is the only unique market of jewellery in the world, the luxury segment in jewellery is never expected to reach the desired level.

VO: What are the retail strategies that Tanishq is looking at to pursue in the recent times?

SK: We are looking at multiple categories for our retail expansion. The store size is expected to be upward of 4000 sq feet and we are putting up large format stores of upto 20,000 sq feet.

Apart from that, we are also looking at the shop in shop format presence like we have at Shoppers Stop, 400 sq feet, Rajouri Garden, New Delhi. We are also putting up one more at Bangalore. We also practice digital media, e commerce, home shopping and the ‘egh’ golden harvest channel where we offer the scheme of paying emis.

VO: What are your expansion plans with respect to Tanishq and Titan Industries as a whole and where do you see them 5 years down the line?

SK: We will be putting up 17 stores this year out of which we have just opened 3 in the last few months at Bhilai, Bhubaneswar and Kanpur. We have work in progress at Pune, Bombay, Kolkata and Hyderabad among other places.

Adding the two Zoya stores to the Tanishq store figure makes it to be 134 this year. However, we also have gold plus chain which targets the smaller cities.

Looking at Titan industries, we have big plans and intend to triple our turnovers five years down the line.

VO: When we talk about Zoya, how many designers have you tied up with? Like, today you have the launch by Raghavendra Rathore’s Gold of Narlai? What sort of tie-up you have? Is this licensing?

SK: The tie-up basically implies design inspiration and design sensibilities he will give us by way of design, themes, concepts and then our team will work on it.

VO: What remains to be the revenue sharing ratio when it comes to adding designer range to your product portfolio?

SK: There is no revenue sharing; he is on a contract with us.

VO: You also have a licensing tie up with Tommy Hilfiger. Could you please elaborate on the same as to what are the rights that you have acquired as a result of the agreement, what is the duration of the deal and what remains to be the driving factor for the same?

SK: We have Tommy and Hugo as of now. The details of the deal are that we have rights only to market in India. However, the Tommy Hilfiger one is more detailed as we wanted to get into the manufacturing bit also but as of now, it’s just the marketing rights that we possess. The deal with Tommy Hilfiger is approximately since 5/6 yrs now.Titan has been serious brand with mostly classical watches or at the max sporty with our Fast Track watches collection but in fashion category, we don’t really have any brand to offer. We chose licensing because of convenience factor.

VO:  What sort of promotional strategy you have been taking for luxury items? Which medium is most preferable?

SK: We have different PR agencies and other mass media like magazines and outdoor campaigns. As of now we are engaged in understanding the use of various methods to reach out to our customers. We very well understand that the customer base for the same is not very large.

VO: What do you think is the future of licensing when we refer to watches and jewellery space?

SK: The watches category is international and licensing is very much happening there. For instance, we have Tommy Hilfiger which can work in any country. On the other hand, Indian jewellery can’t work in any country except in India and similarly European jewellery can never work in India.

There are people who have a personal taste and they know what they are wearing. Such customers wait for their own self actualisation.