BANGALORE: The Rs 1500 million Mumbai headquartered imported furniture major Durian Industries (Durain) launched the new range of office furniture in Bangalore.
So far Durian has been present in the imported home furniture segment and have been retailing the Durian brand across India through 44 outlets, 16 of which are company owned and the rest single brand – Durian only franchisees.
Durian marketing director Manohar Jhunjhunwala said that he plans to add another 10 outlets (eight exclusively for office furniture) over the next one year during a one-on-one with Indiantelevision.com. They also have a separate setup in the US for selling imported furniture-for the home segment in New Jersey and for the new office segment in Los Angles, Jhunjhunwala informed.
Revenues through the home segment furniture have been growing at about 20 per cent annually and Jhunjhunwala is confident of maintaining this rate and even growing them. The new segment is expected to bring in about Rs 300 million to March 2006, and Jhunjhunwala expects this segment to grow on the back of a growing and strong existing customer base which includes ABN Amro, L&T, Telco, ONGC, SBI, CNBC, Reliance, Zee Telefilms etc.
The segment collection is backed by a just-in-time (JIT) inventory management which includes Directors range, Executive range, Conference range, File cabinets and Modular Systems, Computer workstations, Staff/Secretary chairs, task chairs, fabric chairs, PU chairs, Leather chairs, Multi-purpose chairs, Sofa/Settees/Lounge chairs. The prices range from Rs 1800 for chairs to upwards of Rs 140,000 for the table range. The products are generally sourced from Malaysia and Durain is a name of a tree that bears a very fruit there as per Jhunjhunwala. As a matter fact all the companies under the Durian brand are name named after a tree eg. Cedar Inpex which supplies to Mumbai and the North, Beech Impex which caters to the south, especially Bangalore and Hyderabad.
Durian has been spending around Rs 60 million annually towards product promotion which includes Rs 15 million spends on TVC's on niche fifteen satellite channels viz.: Discovery and NGC, both English and Hindi, Discovery Travel and Living, History, Animal Planet, Sanskar, AXN, CNBC TV18, CNBC Awaaz, Zee Cinema and Zee Music.
A new ad-film – a TVC directed by Vipul Shah of the films Aankhen and Waqt fame is due to hit the screens on 20 September.
Durian has announced a new brand ambassador every year for the last three years starting with Ria Sen, Koena Mitra and Katrina Kaif. This year's brand ambassador is upcoming model and actress Pooja Mishra. Delhi based Rashtriya handle both the creative and the media work for Durian.
Besides this Durain were the sponsors of the first CNBC Awaaz consumer award and the Zee Musafir Item Bomb. Max also telecast a 90 minute program four times a year featuring Durian Society Designers Awards with which Meghna Publications through their Society magazine are also associated. There are three categories for this award for student architects-(1) Best Residential category (2) Best Public Place Category and (3) Best Commercial Category. So far the awards have been limited to Mumbai alone, but Jhunjhunwala plans to have them zonally for the upcoming edition - out of New Delhi, Mumbai Bangalore and Kolkatta for the North, West, South and East Zones respectively with a grand finale in Mumbai.
Jhunjhunwala also plans to start a laminate manufacturing unit, based on the experience he gained from the family owned and now closed Rammica Laminates for captive consumption as well for retail shortly.
