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Titan to add 40 more World of Titan stores across India

Clocking in on better times, watch and jewellery retailer Titan Industries is planning to step up its retail presence. It plans to add 40 World of Titan stores across India by the end of the current financial year.

Harish Bhat, COO- watches, said, “The last few weekends were encouraging for the company and we will continue to grow and expand our presence.” The company has 274 stores of ‘World of Titan’ spread over 122 cities across the country, including the 15 stores rolled out this year.

Titan, which is expecting 18% growth this fiscal, will invest 10% of its revenue on marketing initiatives.

According to Bhat, the growth will be driven by the wedding and festive season. “We have increased our marketing initiatives to increase footfalls,” he said. It has lined up a slew of marketing initiatives to boost sales, which include ‘Titan Exchange Offer 2009’, which provides customers the opportunity to bring in any old watch, of any make, in any condition, and receive a flat discount of 20% on their purchase of a brand new watch from Titan.

The firm has so far sold 2 lakh watches worth Rs. 60 crore post the offer. As a marketing initiative, the Bangalore-headquartered watch maker has launched Titan Magic Card across all its formats in Chennai, Bangalore and Coimbatore. It offers free membership to buyers, a gift coupon and free jewellery wash.

Basecamp retail outlets to expand presence, products

For the past 12 years, the iconic Swiss army knife brand Victorinox India is synonymous with not just knives but also watches, travel gear and lifestyle products. Now the company has now embarked on an ambitious retail project. The Victorinox product line includes army knives, cutlery, watches, perfume and travel gear. In addition, the promoters are also wholesale agents and distributors of Maglite torches. These are all signature products. Now, the promoters will be retailing them along with other brands under one roof. Basecamp outlets are presently at DLF mall (Saket, Delhi), Phoenix mall (Mumbai) and, the newest one, at Ambience mall (Gurgaon).

Basecamp has gear such as sleeping bags, handy tools and travel luggage, of which the speciality is waterproof bags that you can even go swimming with! Another unique product will be disposable underwear, a real life-saver while camping. There is also a nail polish remover that comes on tissues — that you can just wipe away with. Victorinox India doesn’t have any exclusive stores. Instead, it has the concept of shop in shops and about 800 such partnerships. It retails watches at 35 outlets and luggage at 10 outlets.

Pocket knives are impulse products so these are present at many other stores, instead of just being limited to company-owned ones. In terms of corporate gifts, the products have an advantage because they are unique and last a lifetime. Clients include IBM, Microsoft, Dabur, private banks and pharma companies.

The Company brought out a 125-year anniversary knife last year. It is a replica of the first Swiss knife. It retailed a specialised rescue tool too last year. It is finished in bright yellow and is suitable for ambulance and fire brigade crews, but also other car users. It has a special sharpened tip to break through toughened safety glass and a cutter to tear the glass. It is priced at Rs 3,100 and is useful if you are trapped in your car in an emergency. It also has ornamental knifes with rosewood handles, which are favoured by chefs. They are also a great gifting option.

Roger Dubuis unveils Rs. 5.6 mn watch

In 2004, ROGER DUBUIS presented its first line of leisure watches, taking the original – and unprecedented at that time – of incorporating a Tourbillon into a diving watch. This brand-new concept, meeting the highest technical and aesthetic standards, soon became a new archetypal sports watch. A few years later, ROGER DUBUIS now pursues its avant-garde developments by combining noble metals with the use of moulded rubber on the bezel and crown of its new EasyDiver watch. This new watch is now available at select stores in India (Mumbai & Delhi) and is priced at just over INR 56 lakhs*.

Whether forcefully virile in the black rubber-moulded version or delightfully summery when clad in white, the rugged unisex case of the new collection, available in three sizes (40 mm, 46 mm or 48 mm), not only matches the mood of the moment, but also the growing demand from a sophisticated clientele wishing to adopt a timepiece able to keep step with its many activities

Pursuing his innovative strategy, Manufacture Roger Dubuis has chosen, simultaneously with the radical transformation of the architectural structure, to blacken the “skeleton” tourbillon movements using a special rhodium treatment.

The two sapphire crystals surrounding the beating hearts highlight the rigorous and technical lines of this model. Radiating an understated and decidedly urban aura of elegance, technique meets
aesthetics in a sophisticated stage-setting.

This model in titanium, water-resistant to 30 Bars is equipped with a mechanical self-winding movement stamped with the Poinçon de Genève quality hallmark.

The watch is priced at over INR 56 lakhs * (approximately) and is available at select stores in Mumbai & Delhi.

Raymond Weil to set up local arm

Luxury Swiss watch brand Raymond Weil is setting up an Indian subsidiary -- Raymond Weil India Pvt Ltd -- to vie for a piece of the Rs. 1,200 crore high-end watch market. Raymond Weil Watches CEO & president Olivier Bernheim said, “India is a significant
market for us and we expect it to be one of the largest one.”

The local subsidiary is expected to be operational by November this year. Raymond Weil expects India to contribute 7% to the company’s global sales by 2010 end. However, he refused to divulge the number of watches the firm sold last year. The company currently has 25 dealers in India and plans to ramp up the number to 40 by 2010.

Raymond Weil, which was affected by the slowdown, is betting big on new launches and pricing strategy to increase its share in the luxury watch market. The firm has also hiked its marketing budget by 15% this year.

According to Bernheim, the luxury watch market has been impacted by the global slowdown, especially in America, Europe and to some extent in India, especially in cities like Pune and Bangalore. “We expect the festive season to be better this year,” he added.

The watchmaker also plans to roll out around 10 standalone retail stores in the next 18-24 months across metros. The first store is expected to come up by Christmas this year. Bernheim said due to high import duties of around 42% levied on watches in India, the company has been forced to cut its margins.India’s luxury watch market is growing at 30% with and international players like Rado, Omega, Longines, Rolex, Tissot and Christian Dior are all vying for a bigger pie.

Titan mulls increasing of Helios stores to 70 in four years

Titan Watches (Titan) is in plans to grow the number of its Helios chain of multi-brand premium watch stores to 70 over the next four years across the top 25 towns in India.

Informed Titan Watches COO Harish Bhatt that the premium watch market has been growing at a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 30 per cent in India and Titan plans to tap this growing market.

In January this year, Titan launched the first and at present the only ‘Helios’ store in the country in Bangalore with the tagline ‘Obsessed with watches’.

The store averages about 700 footfalls per month of which about 55 per cent are converted to sales and service with an average ticket size of Rs.10,000.

Swiss premium watch brand Raymond Weil announced the India launch of its ‘Noemia’ ladies collection at Helios recently. The arrangement is an exclusive one – Noemia will be available only at the Helios stores.

Titan has been promoting the Helios chain by BTL events, newspaper, outdoor hoardings and radio advertisements. Raymond Weil president and CEO Oliver Bernheim plans to regularise the use of print media until the chain has a presence in other cities in the country.

Initially, O&M did the creative work for Helios which are now being handled by a local Bangalore agency – Origami. The media buying is done through Maxus. Creative work for Noemia will be done at Switzerland, informed Bernheim.

Lunar clock to be built for 2012 

Scientists and artists plan to build a 40m-wide lunar clock by the River Thames by 2012. The aim is to create a new London landmark close to the proposed Olympic stadium as a monument to a more natural way of marking time. The proposed site is at East India Dock, six miles along the river from Westminster Palace.

Its designers hope their clock will become as iconic as Big Ben, which has been marking time for 150 years. The site is currently a bedraggled nature reserve. The researchers hope their clock will eventually become as iconic as Big Ben Across the river are the magnificent skyscrapers of Canary Wharf, and nearby are offices built from sea freight containers.

The clock would be powered by the tides from the Thames. There are three giant concentric rings made from recycled glass. Light shines through from the glass in time with the Moon’s cycles so the largest ring shows the lunar phase. Gradually the light waxes on all the way around the ring and connects full circle when it’s full Moon.

The second ring is like the big hand of the clock. It’s a marker of light that tracks the Moon around the globe so that's the lunar day cycle. The third ring - the smallest - is the small hand that tracks the tide as it goes from high tide to low. The clock has been called Aluna. It is a word from the Kogi indigenous people of Colombia.

David Rooney, curator of time at London’s Science Museum, is also involved with the project. Aluna is a project which tries to connect us back to the cosmic cycle, with nature. I think that’s very important especially in the very technological age we live in. The project is more than a gleam in the eye of these artists and scientists.

Hublot to invest US$15 mn in India

Hublot watches are distinct for using a blend of precious metals with rubber or ceramic and even carbon. Jean-Claude Biver, chief executive of the Louis Vuitton Moët Hennessy SA-owned company, says that the $220 million Hublot aims to increase the 3% revenue contribution from India to 10% by 2015 by deploying about $15 million for marketing and distribution.

Jean-Claude Biver says the culture of negotiating for products in India needs to change. “Our target customer is young, and although the age group can be defined as 30-45, it’s their thinking that I’m really referring to. Many young customers are attracted by the future and they want to connect to the future and disconnect from the past. This is the very basis of our brand message and philosophy because we are interpreting tradition in a very different way. For 450 years now, luxury watches have been made of metals such as gold, platinum and silver and therefore, available in colours such as yellow, white and grey. We thought, why not introduce new materials such as rubber, carbon, magnesium, ceramic, among others, that signify this new age and address the future.”

Biver adds, “You see, people use watches for different reasons now. One is to read the time, and one is for communication. As soon as someone buys a watch that costs more than $50, they enter the world of irrationality because they no longer buy it to indicate time — your mobile phone may give you more accurate time than a million-dollar watch. This purchase is used to communicate your dream of owning an expensive watch, or to communicate the
person you are — sporty, rich, chic, powerful, whatever it may be. These have become especially important in today’s world where you may not be able to communicate as freely with people around you, but your watch can do that. We have some 400 buyers in India and the reasons they buy these watches are no different from the buyers elsewhere.”

Biver avers, “China is important but in India, there is more potential because there is incredible art and history here and this is what luxury items are all about. In the next few years, we are investing $15 million in just marketing the brand in the country. Although we are not looking at stand-alone stories just yet, we do plan to increase our distribution network through joint ventures and franchise operations. By 2015, we want to increase the amount of revenue this country generates from 3% of our global turnover to 10%.”

Biver states, “We are staying away from Bollywood stars because we have seen that if one actor endorses a product, other actors won’t buy it, and they (actors) are our consumers, so we can’t do that.” Biver emphasizes, “The biggest sweat in general for luxury items is the discount. If you buy a luxury item and you meet another person who bought it for less, you get upset with the brand and may never come back to it. Price should never be discussed and it should be equal. This is a major problem for a market like India because there is a culture of negotiating foreverything and this needs to be changed for more luxury items to be present here.”

Gitanjali unveils the largest luxury jewellery boutique in India

Gitanjali Lifestyle Ltd, the luxury and retail arm of the Gitanjali Group, unveiled the largest luxury jewellery showroom in India by the name of Giantti. Living upto the reputation of Gitanjali Lifestyle that has brought in various international lifestyle brands to the country, the newly launched luxury jewellery boutique will showcase hi-end jewellery, watches and accessories. Stefan Hafner, La Nouvelle Bague, Roberta Poratti, Iosi, Damiani, Staurino, Alfred, Bliss Tesoro, Greggio, Rosato, Calgaro are some of the popular international labels to watch out for. Also, this new age retail space will house Indian brands like Parineeta, Nakshatra eternity, World of Solitaire and World of pearls to mention a few.



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