NEW DELHI: Just like every other brand, 2020 was a roller coaster ride for Timex, one of the most successful watch brands in the country, as well. While the first quarter of FY21, ending June 2020 brought in net loss of Rs 12.42 crore for the watchmaker, the second quarter’s net loss stood at Rs 3.57 crores. However, the brand has posted a quarterly net profit of Rs 4 crore in December 2020, indicating that the business is back in the groove. In an exclusive conversation with Indiantelevision.com’s Mansi Sharma, Timex Group head of marketing & e-commerce Ajay Dhyani attributed this quick revival to their hands-on digitisation strategies, the improving consumer sentiments, and the constant experimentation on the brand’s part in introducing new styles. The brand happened to launch its app last year, brought in the iconic Furla watches to India, partnered with Timehut for sales, and also launched a range of fitness bands in the market. Dhyani also talked about how the coming financial year looks like and their marketing strategies for the months ahead.
Edited excerpts:
On the year 2020.
Much like everyone, 2020 was quite a challenging year for us too. While we were confident of recoding a high growth in January-February, we witnessed a huge dip in sales starting March, because of the lockdown. But we also saw it as an opportunity to scale up our omnichannel presence and utilised the time to strengthen our digital presence. We relied a lot on social media activities to rekindle consumer sentiment and got an overwhelming response from consumers. The next two quarters then just improved for us in terms of performance.
On the brand’s digital expansion.
Our first and foremost step in this direction was to start meaningful conversations with our customers using social media. As you know, Timex is a 165-year-old brand and we are the proudest watchmakers in the business. Our whole initiative has been to stand true to our brand ethos and give the best value to our customers. So, we knew that our conversations should be reflective of this. Therefore, we engaged with customers with our digital campaigns like Desh Ka Gaurav (launched June 2020 with brand TMX), wherein we saluted the true heroes of the country for protecting the lives of others around.
Next, we focused on improving our sales via our website. To give one small example, our iconic international products like Waterbury are not always in stock. As a result, we always have more orders than the supplies for such products. So, we gave our customers a never-seen-before offer wherein they could pay for the watches then and got them delivered to their doorstep whenever lockdown ended. It also helped us test the waters and understand the consumer sentiment better. And it got an amazing result. Additionally, we strengthened our positioning and presence on all the e-commerce platforms, which fared pretty well for us.
On marketing plans.
If you look back over the last three years, I would say that we have evolved a lot in terms of our shape of media spends. The contribution of digital spends has increased tremendously over the last couple of years and we feel it really is the best way to connect with your consumers and is the most efficient channel to really maximise the RoI. Even if you do not have a brand ambassador, you can directly connect with your customers. Apart from that, we are investing a lot in visual merchandising and in-store promotions. We have reduced our spends on print and television. But that does not mean that they are not relevant to us. We use these ATL channels when there is a big launch that we are doing or when we are trying to interact in a bigger manner with customers.
So, overall, yes, we are spending a good chunk of our marketing budget on digital platforms and visual merchandising. On digital, we are quite big on e-commerce channels.
On the brand’s strongest products.
We are a very popular brand and our luxury offerings like Salvatore Ferragamo and Versace have been historically performing amazingly well for us. Then we have a fashion segment, with watches ranging from Rs 10,000 to Rs 20,000, where we are seeing tremendous growth for the past few years. This a segment where most of the activity is happening and there is a lot of scope for growth as well with a new set of consumers with more disposable income entering the market regularly. We are, in fact, working towards being the most formidable and most sought after fashion brand.
On the menace of fake watches.
India is a growing watch market. There is a lot of headroom for growth. If you look at the market right now, wristwatch penetration in India right now stands at just 30-40 per cent, and among them, only three to four per cent must be having multiple watches. Which is very unlike the international market where watches are a part of a person’s style statement.
Now, if you talk about fake watches, it is not such a big problem for us. If you talk about the iconic luxury brands like Versace, if a person buys a fake, they were never a customer for us. So we have nothing to lose there and I don’t think it is impacting us significantly. And as I said, we are a growing market. Therefore, I see this problem reducing even further as people get more aware.
On further growth plans.
We are working towards strengthening our omnichannel presence. While digital is a big medium for us when it comes to sales, we see the majority of our products going off the shelves via offline retail channels. We also feel that we are all set to add newer markets and customer segments to our brands, especially from smaller cities where the sense of fashion is developing. For 2021, we have quite an exciting calendar, wherein we are planning a big campaign, launching some of our global business in India, and providing comfort with style to our customers.
We are also working towards improving user experience on our digital sales channels by providing a complete 360-degree view of our watches. We are putting as much detailed information about our brand online as possible. We are also striking relevant partnerships and taking initiatives to promote digital payments on both our online and offline stores.
