Ashwini Gangal
Marketing

D'decor launches first brand campaign; signs SRK and Gauri as ambassadors

The fashion forward home furnishing brand is set to up its sales in India with the help of an aggressive communication campaign, with the tagline 'Innovating Homes'

Manufacturer and exporter of curtains and upholstery fabrics, D'decor is a 10 year old company and has been present in the Indian market for the past three years. It has now launched its very first ad campaign in the country, in anticipation of a spurt in the home sector. "More than 2.5 crore new homes are expected in the next decade," informs Ajay Arora, managing director, D'decor.

This branding communication marks the company's shift from B2B (business to business) to B2C (business to consumer) trade. More specifically, so far, the company had been supplying its products to other brands all over Europe and the United States of America.

D'decor launches first brand campaign; signs SRK and Gauri as ambassadors
D'decor's customers include some of the large international brands such as Kravet, Jab, Romo, Designer's Guild and Casamance, amongst others. The company exports to more than 25 countries globally, including the USA, Europe, West Asia, Russia, Australia, New Zealand and South Africa. This is the first time the brand will plunge into selling directly to consumers in India.

The campaign is aimed at achieving the brand's vision to bring European fashion into the homes of at least one million consumers in the country. The target group (TG) comprises all Indian homes, presumably the women of these families who usually look into matters such as home furnishing.

D'decor launches first brand campaign; signs SRK and Gauri as ambassadors
The positioning statement that the brand is attempting to make via this campaign is: 'You don't need to source your home furnishing products from abroad; we innovate in sync with global standards'. This communication is in tandem with the brand's positioning in the global market.

The brand currently has a 30 per cent market share in India - considering only the middle, upper-middle and affluent socio economic classes. If the bottom 45 per cent (from an SEC perspective) of India's population is included in the consideration, then the market share of the brand is 15-20 per cent.

The appointment of popular actor Shahrukh Khan (SRK) and his wife Gauri Khan is a testament to the aggressive push strategy that the brand plans to set into motion. When asked about why the brand decided to bring the actor and his wife on board as brand ambassadors, Arora answers, "Besides the fact that we perceive a match between SRK's qualities and what the brand stands for, such as leadership, innovation and ethics, he and Gauri, together, are an ideal image of homemakers and imply 'family'. Having the duo endorse the brand will thus help strike a chord with Indian families."

When asked why the brand is using an ambassador right at the outset of the branding process, Arora states that getting the first step right is equivalent to achieving 50 per cent of the objective.

Besides vigorous branding and the appointment of powerhouse brand endorsers, D'decor has several other marketing innovations up its sleeve. "We follow a unique business model that draws inspiration from the way amazon.com functions," says Arora.

He explains that all of the company's 300 retailers are connected via the Internet. In the retail stores, there are no inventories; the customers are shown product swatches (samples) in a catalogue instead of the huge rolls of the products usually displayed by furnishing stores. This initiative is aimed at avoiding variety shrinkage at the retail store level and also serves to reduce customers' waiting time.

The catalogues include detailed colour combined fabric collages and 'stories' of how the product will look when applied. Once a choice is made, the retailer logs onto a website and places the order. The fabric is then delivered, via Blue Dart, to the retail store within 48 hours, following which it is delivered to the customer's home. Interestingly, though the company produces 1,00,000 meters of fabric a day, there are no minimums and a customer may place an order of as little as one meter of material. The company's warehouse, where all the inventories are stored, is located at Bhiwandi.

The media mix for this campaign includes TV, outdoor, print (magazines and newspapers), radio, in-cinema advertising and the Internet (social media). The first TVC will be aired on September 12 and every six months, the communication plan will be modified and a new TVC will be released.

"There is a lot of fragmentation of media; we want to embed the brand in the consumers' minds and claim a large mindshare soon," asserts Arora. He goes on to reveal that the ad spend allotted for the campaign includes 10 per cent of the brand's sales in the Indian market.

"The home furnishing category is also highly fragmented due to too many suppliers and retailers. No single player has reached an economy of scale that justifies large scale branding," he says, addressing the fact that the category is not highly competitive.

Characteristically, this is a trade led category that is more influenced by retail level and product level consumer decisions. Given this, the branding efforts of D'decor are a tad out of the ordinary.

D'décor's design department works in sync with Italian design houses, thus bridging the gap between international fashion and home furnishings. The company supplies to leading furnishing stores across the country, such as Bharat Furnishings (Mumbai), Novelty (Mumbai), Drape Avenue (Bengaluru), Times Furnishing (Kolkata), Skipper (Kolkata) and Jagdish Stores (Delhi).

The brand offers 400-500 designs in seven-eight colours each and has a price offering of Rs 250-1300 per meter. It has 3000 SKUs (stock keeping units).

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