Modi Revlon, a leading company in the cosmetics industry, plans to expand its presence in tier 2 and 3 towns with its mass brand – Street Wear. “We have decided to align ourselves with our strengths which is colour cosmetics and hair care in the Indian market. In the past six months, colour cosmetics as a category has been growing at 20 per cent. It has greater potential as it is a bigger segment at Rs 1,500 crore growing at 20 per cent and 75 per cent of it is in the mass category, “ said Deepak Bhandari, Marketing Director, Modi Revlon. The company plans to extend its Street Wear brand to 75 towns (from the current 30) to reach out to 18,000 outlets by 2014.
A new manufacturing base is also being proposed in Bangladesh for manufacturing colour cosmetics. “Since our group company already has a base for pharma manufacturing, we are looking at the possibility to set up colour cosmetics manufacturing as well in Bangladesh,” added Bhandari. In the past the company has set up manufacturing base in Sri Lanka.
Despite being a premium brand, Revlon is building its mass brand under Street Wear today with 70 per cent of company’s business skewed towards its colour cosmetics range. Street Wear was launched in 2005 and is pitted against Lakme and Maybelline in cosmetics but does not have adequate distribution compared to its competitors. Revlon, on the other hand, competes with brands such as L’Oreal.
“We have limited distribution and have thus stayed away from using mass media extensively. We would rather invest behind the digital media on YouTube and mobile to reach out to consumers and have earmarked an investment of Rs 30 crore towards building the business in India,” he said.
Having forged the joint venture in 1995, Modi Revlon entered the country on the back of its heritage brands like Flex and Charlie from Revlon’s international portfolio. However, it has decided to stay away from cluttered and competitive segments such as shampoos and deos despite having strong brands in these categories. While it did try to grow the fragrance portfolio in India by adding new fragrance brands like 24/7 from South Africa, none of these gained acceptance in the Indian market. The company has avoided the skincare category too.
“There are issues for these brands in the grey market and while shampoo brands like Flex are still around, we have decided to focus on colour cosmetics and hair colour in the Indian market. The size is bigger in these categories and we would be getting into tier 2 and 3 towns with our mass premium range of brands such as Street Wear in cosmetics and Color N Care in hair colour,” said Bhandari.