Godrej Consumer to Take Brands Overseas

Good Knight, Hit, Renew and Godrej Expert to foray into Asia, Africa and Latin America mkt

WRITANKAR MUKHERJEE KOLKATA

Godrej Consumer Products will take its brands Good Knight, Hit, Renew and Godrej Expert abroad and possibly enter beauty products, shampoos and food segments as it targets more than . 30,000-crore turnover by 2020, a top official said.
"We are drawing the roadmap to take our own brands to overseas markets by end of the year,” Godrej Group Chief Strategy Officer Vivek Gambhir said.
“We want to take our insecticide brands like Good Knight and Hit to the African and Latin American markets, and hair colour brands like Renew and Godrej Expert to Asian markets like Indonesia," he said. Godrej Consumer wants to accelerate its pace of growth to 25% a year from 18% to become a . 30,000-crore entity by 2020, Gambhir said. He said the group plans to evaluate its 3X3 strategy—which is about expanding in three continents (Asia, Africa and Latin America) through three categories (home care, personal wash and hair care)—to accelerate growth.
“We would look at ways to expand personal wash into personal care without diluting margins as profit margins are comparatively lower in this category and subject to commodity price swings,” Gambhir said. “We would evaluate a possible entry into foods which too can become a big driver.” He said the company localises the formulation of its brands for international foray. For instance, it recently rolled out the Renew brand on trial in South Africa where the product has been customized for Caucasian hair.
Godrej Consumer is already a market leader in hair care in South Africa, Kenya, Ghana, Argentina and Uruguay, thanks to an international acquisition spree over the last couple of years. It has bought South African firms Darling Group Holdings, Rapidol and Kinky Group, African medicated brand Tura, Indonesia’s Megasari Group and Argentina’s hair colour companies Issue Group and Argencos. Gambhir said Godrej Consumer will look at possibilities of brand extension for popular brands like Cinthol, Godrej Expert, Good Knight, Hit and Protekt in its product expansion process. He said the company will be cautious in expansion. “We will not get seduced for growth and will take calibrated steps.”

World's Top 10 Beauty Companies 2010

 

L'Oréal, with reported 2010 consolidated sales of 19.5 billion, tops WWD Beauty Inc’s list of the world’s top 100 beauty companies for 2010, ahead of P&G, Unilever, Estée Lauder and Shiseido. Together, the 100 top companies clocked sales of $176.18 billion in 2010.  

1 L'Oréal HQ: Clichy, France
Subsidiaries + Main Brands: L’Oréal Professionnel, Redken, Kerastase, Matrix, L’Oréal Paris, Garnier, Maybelline New York, Lancôme, Giorgio Armani Perfumes & Cosmetics, Yves Saint Laurent, Biotherm, Kiehl’s, Ralph Lauren Fragrances, Shu Uemura, Cacharel, Helena Rubinstein, Diesel, Vichy, La Roche-Posay, SkinCeuticals, Innéov, The Body Shop 

 2 P&G HQ: Cincinnati
Subsidiaries + Main Brands: Pantene, Head & Shoulders, Clairol, Herbal Essences, Wella, Cover Girl, Hugo Boss, Old Spice, Lacoste, Jean Patou, Gucci, Christina Aguilera, Dolce & Gabbana, Olay, Secret  

3 Unilever HQ: London, Rotterdam, Netherlands
Subsidiaries + Main Brands: Axe/Lynx, Impulse, Rexona/Sure, Dove, Lux, Pond's, Suave, Sunsilk/Seda/Sedal/ Hazeline, Timotei, Clear, Mods, Vaseline, Tigi, Monsavon, Radox, Duschdas, Brylcreem  

4 The Estée Lauder Cos.
HQ: New York Subsidiaries + Main Brands: Este´e Lauder, Aramis, Clinique Prescriptives, Lab Series, Origins, MAC Cosmetics, Bobbi Brown, Tommy Hilfiger, Kiton, Donna Karan, Darphin, Michael Kors, American Beauty, Flirt, Good Skin Labs, Grassroots Research Labs, Daisy Fuentes  

5 Shiseido Co. HQ: Tokyo
Subsidiaries + Main Brands: Shiseido, Cle´de Peau Beaute´, Sea Breeze, Carita, Decle´or, Nars, Joico, Shiseido Professional, Zotos, Bare Escentuals, In and On, Parfums Issey Miyake, Parfums Jean Paul Gaultier, Parfums Narciso Rodriguez,Parfums Elie Saab  

6 Avon Products HQ: New York
Subsidiaries + Main Brands: Avon Color, Anew, Skin-So-Soft, Mark, Liz Earle, Tiny Tillia, Advance Techniques, Reese Witherspoon, Derek Jeter, Christian Lacroix, Fergie, Herve´ Le ger  

7 Beiersdorf HQ:Hamburg, Germany
Subsidiaries + Main Brands: Nivea, 8x4, Atrix, Labello, Hidrofugal, Eucerin, La Prairie, Juvena, SBT Skin Biology Therapy, Marlies Mo¨ller, Florena, C-Bons Hair Care 

 8 Kao Group HQ: Tokyo
Subsidiaries + Main Brands: Biore´, Sofina, Asience, Essential, Merit, Liese, Blaune´, Segreta, Cape, Est, Jergens, Cure´l, John Frieda, Goldwell, Molton Brown, Sensai, RMK, Suqqu, Lunasol, Coffret D'Or, Doltier, Evita, Allie, Suisai  

9 Johnson & Johnson HQ: New Brunswick, N.J.
Subsidiaries + Main Brands: Neutrogena, Aveeno, RoC, Clean & Clear, Johnson's, Ambi, Purpose, Shower to Shower, Lubriderm, Bebe, Natusan, Penaten, Prim'Age, Vendome, PH5.5, Biafine, Persavon, Sundown, Dabao  

10 Chanel HQ: Neuilly-sur-Seine, France
Subsidiaries + Main Brands: Chanel No.5, Allure, Coco, Chance, No.19, Cristalle, Pour Monsieur, Antaeus, Egoi¨ste, Les Exclusifs, Bleu de Chanel, Sublimage, Hydramax + Active, White Essentiel, Le Blanc, Rouge Allure, Le Vernis, Inimitable, Les 4 Ombres, Vitalumie`re, Joues Contrastes

Brands Unravelling Mystery Shopping

Shoppers Stop, Kimaya, Nirula's, Samsung & Axis Bank among cos using quality audits

NEHA DEWAN NEW DELHI

    Ashopper recently walked into a Hidesign store and asked if a particular bag was available in a certain colour. A salesman said the leather goods brand does not make that bag in that colour. He was lying. And the customer knew it because she was a mystery shopper. Mystery shopper—someone paid by companies to masquerade as a customer to discreetly measure the quality of services in their showrooms and front offices—is the new blue-eyed boy of marketers and service providers who have realised the importance of customer experience in a competitive marketplace.
A slew of companies such as WeMark, Bare International, Shaw Hotels & Consultancy and Grass Roots now offer mystery shopping audit, helping brands assess and improve the performance of their sales staff.
“Brands have to evolve along with change in consumer behavior. Mystery shopping is a good measurement tool available for benchmarking,” says Grass Roots India MD Charoo Aggarwal. Many brands including retailers Shoppers Stop and Kimaya Fashions, restaurant chain Nirula's, electronics maker Samsung and Axis Bank have already made such audits part of their quality initiatives.
And the list is growing steadily as mystery audits often throw up startling facts and reveal huge room for improvement.
“Imagine someone turning their back on you and refusing point blank when you ask them what can I buy with a budget of . 2,000? But that’s exactly the surprising lack of etiquette that came through when a footwear brand salesman was asked that question by a customer,” says Gaurav Pachauri, head of We-Mark, which offers its service to more than 100 brands including Major Brands and Metro Shoes. Hidesign President Dilip Kapur, who started secret audits in his company one-and-half-years back, had several surprises in store when he did that. “At times, the staff would say that a product was in buffalo leather instead of cowhide to avoid hurting religious sentiments,” he says. In certain other cases, the primary agenda was just about closing a sale without listening to the need of the client.
EARLY DAYS YET Globally, retailers and hoteliers have been using mystery shopping as a significant measure to assess customer service, training and other facilities for more than 50 years. But in India, this is a nascent phenomenon.
While hospitality and aviation companies have been doing this for about a decade now, the industry is gaining momentum only now with consumer brands and retailers taking to it.
“Product categories which involve high involvement purchase and require experiential selling are the ones using mystery shopping services in India,” says ChannelPlay Consulting Founder & CEO Sundeep Holani. He says Indian retailers are still reluctant to try mystery audit. “Many of our clients are in the trial stage of this concept. Many do not want to shake up the existing structure and fear the retailers,” says Holani.
LACKING SOFT SKILLS Mystery shoppers and brands identify soft skills and intuitiveness as the key default areas among store staff in the country. “A lot of times, it has been found that the store staff expects customers to approach them. Also they are unable to understand what a customer really wants and are just interested in closing a sale quickly,” says WeMark’s Pachauri.
Garment brand Kimaya Fashions, which conducts these audits once a month in every store, found that the key concern area for them was ‘going the extra mile’ for customers.
In one of its audit, the mystery shopper was insistent on having sleeves on an outfit, which was not possible due to the cut and the make of the fabric. But the salesman would only say it can’t be done and offered no explanation. “Instead of answering in the negative, she could have explained about the fabric of the garment. The fabric was chicken work and tampering with it in any way would damage the fabric, rendering it useless. That would have made sense to anyone,” says Kimaya Fashions Chairman Pradeep Hirani.
Now, Kimaya has started giving away performance-related incentives to employees who make
    an extra effort
    with customers. Bare International, which offers mystery audits to clients such as Shoppers Stop through an army of 10,000 freelance mystery shoppers in the country, says that the biggest drawback that has noticed in India is a lack of intuitiveness.
“This aspect is a big miss in India,” says Bare International GM & MD—India, Middle East and Africa Sonul Verdia. “Sales staff mostly only see and hear what is being asked. They don’t try and gauge what the consumer may actually need,'' he says.
Its audit helped Shoppers Stop realize that it could do better on the add-on selling service.
“The practice where staff can recommend more things to match with a garment or an accessory was not up to the desired level. For instance, they could suggest an accessory with a kurta when a woman is shopping,” says Shoppers Stop Head—Operations Best Practices Aniyan Nair.
After the audit, the departmental store chain made a conscious effort to train its staff on product knowledge so that they could offer such appropriate recommendations to customers, Nair says.
SOLVING MYSTERIES Shoppers Stop has scaled up these audits across their 43 stores in India to three visits in a month over the last one and a half years. Typically, mystery auditors charge . 1,500-2,000 for a small size retail format store, with fees going up if clients want specific scenarios to be created or if they want a specific profile of a mystery shopper. While a mystery shopper spends 30-45 minutes to review a small retail store, it could take 2-3 days to review a hotel.
Such audits also highlighted the need to put in place appropriate grooming standards, especially for leading fashion brands. Major Brands, which has fashion brands such as Mango, Promod, Charles & Keith and Inglot in its portfolio, found that their stores ranked low on the grooming report card. So, it tied up with salons to improve the look of their staff.
Almost all brands that have employed mystery shoppers swear by these secret audits and say they will make it a regular practice. “It keeps people on their toes all the time. They never really know who could turn out to be the next mystery shopper,” says Hidesign’s Kapur.

MTV Music Awards Gets Record 12.4-Million Viewers

LOS ANGELES The buzz-heavy 2011 Video Music Awards scored the biggest audience in MTV's history. MTV said that a record-breaking 12.4 million people watched Sunday's live performance and awards ceremony from Los Angeles, where the late British singer Amy Winehouse was remembered in a moving tribute. Reuters

HUL,Star Bazaar Tie up for CSR Campaign

MUMBAI Hindustan Unilever has tied up with Tata Group retail-arm Star Bazaar to promote education of the underprivileged children. The campaign, which started on August 29, will last till September 21 in 13 Star Bazaar stores.

Indiatimes Shopping Sales Cross . 1-crore a-day Mark

NEW DELHI Indiatimes Shopping, the e-commerce portal of Times Internet, crossed the . 1 crore-a-day mark in sales and clocked over . 20 crore in July. The top-selling category is the mobile phone, contributing 40% of the sales. Closely following on its heels are computers, mobile accessories, computer accessories, apparel and electronic goods. Rishi Khiani, CEO of Times Internet, said, “With a comprehensive range of products, best deals and reliable service initiatives, we have been seeing a constant rise in our sales.”

MTS Launches Sub-. 5,000 Android Smartphones

NEW DELHI Sistema Shyam TeleServices (SSTL), which operates under the brand name MTS, on Tuesday launched two Android-based smartphones priced below . 5,000. MTS MTag 3.1 and MTS Livewire are based on Qualcomm's mobile processors. The sleek MTS MTag 3.1 from Huawei comes with audio and video player with and a 3.2 megapixel camera.