By Charu Lamba, Deputy Editor
Jul 28, 2022 / 9 MIN READ
Today, brands are using the internet, mobile devices, social media, and other digital channels in their day-to-day lives. That has changed consumers' expectations, needs, and wants even while shopping. Purchase behavior now includes online research and perusing customer satisfaction reviews, influencing purchasing initiatives and decision-making. The increasing influence of the digital natives - millennials, Gen-Z, and newer generations is also visibly apparent.
In the fast-changing and challenging environment that the pandemic created, retail companies have had to react to the changing dynamics of customer behavior, evolving market forces, a non-traditional workforce, and above all systemic change brought about by new technologies, start-up disruption, and a huge infusion of funds to invest in the latest that technology has to offer. While most retailers were quick to embrace new technologies, and change their strategy and business models, many of them were slow to revamp their operating models.
Highlighting how TIMEX has observed the changing consumer behavior and what steps the company is taking to match them, Deepak Chhabra, MD of TIMEX Group India said, “The expectation of consumer are changing on largely two buckets - one is how they interact with the brand, largely doesn't mean how they buy only, but how they generally engage with the brand, and how consumption of this category is changing.”
“I will break it into these two parts. Talking about the channels, if you have to reach out to almost a large part of the consumers who want to interact with you, you have to have multi-channels, and that's a foreground conclusion. And the younger consumer is interacting more online. Even a bit mature consumer is at least discovering or exploring online. So online becomes a bit important, not only as a sales channel but also as a channel which you get visibility on,” he further added.
At present, TIMEX is present in almost all the existing channels – webstore, marketplaces, trade channels, multi-brand retail stores, and exclusive brick-and-mortar stores to name a few. At present, the brand has 44 offline stores and online contribute 23-24 percent of its overall revenue.
“Our webstore being more than a sales channel, it's a very curated platform where our potential consumers can interact with us and they can get to know about what we are doing, what we are, what is our history and a lot more,” he asserted.
“Going ahead, we'll be spending a lot of energy and resources on our online visibility, not necessarily just to sell, but to ensure that our discoverability is higher. Apart from this, on brick-and-mortar, we are probably under-leveraged. Watch is a category where the consumer wants to really interact more closely and get an experience rather than buy a watch. So, we are going to expand and you will see expansion probably in Q4. We are just ensuring that we have the right model, we have the right format, we have the right size, we have the right place and we have the right franchisee model,” he further added.
Betting Big on Omnichannel
The company is constantly enhancing its capabilities to provide a true omnichannel experience to its consumers and is expecting to roll it out in the next 6 months.
“We had almost rolled it out and then we decided to work a bit more on it. The platform is ready with us. Our solution is ready with us, but there are certain logistics issues, which I think, have not to do with technology only, but it's to do with how the retail works. We work on a franchise model and becomes a bit difficult when you don't have one single franchise or couple of franchises for all your stores. So, there are challenges of fulfillment when it comes to the franchise and we are actively looking into it,” he explained.
Tapping The Gen-Z
Currently, the core TG of the company is between 25 to 40 years with a spill a bit above rather than below 25. Going ahead, the brand is trying to target younger consumers between 20-25 years of age and intends to have a core TG between 20-30 years of age.
“In future, majority of our marketing investments - probably in excess of 70 percent - will be digital including social media, influencer marketing as the younger consumers easily relate to all this. Along with this, we also launched a technology-backed smartwatch to match their changing expectations,” he stated.
The company is investing a lot to bring state-of-the-art features, every month with the new launches of their smartwatches under the brands TIMEX and Helix.
“Business is more about partnerships and collaborations. We have been collaborating with various brands and Netflix series to resonate with the younger consumers,” he said.
The company is also planning to introduce tools like artificial intelligence and augmented reality on its webstore.
“We want to invest in these technologies to understand how a consumer behaves, what they interact with, and what other things they buy. Apart from this, it will also help us in showcasing how the product will look on them while they're wearing different kinds of ensembles and the clothing and how they can compare one watch with another,” he explained.
At its stores, the company is providing an endless aisle option to its consumers.
“Our stores span across 400-450 sq.ft carpet area and from here we sell our own brands as well as licensed brands. Not all the brands can be sold from all the stores because of space scarcity, but we do sell more than 4-5 brands in each of the stores' basis on the location and the consumer profile. So, we offer our consumers an endless aisle option.
Future Plans
At present, the brand sells through listed 6,000 points of sale when it comes to multi-brand outlets, and going ahead, it plans to focus more on the metro cities and mini-metros.
“We will be betting big on the franchising model to aid our expansion plans. We are also refreshing our store layouts, store look, and fit-outs. Along with this, the expansion in the licensed brand will also be on the radar, and they'll be part of our store expansion. We intend to be at about 800 points of sale for our license brand portfolio in the next 6-8 months, which currently is at about 400,” he stated.
At present, the company has 10 licensed brands on board.
“Guess is the major brand among our portfolio and probably in next 2-2.5 months, we are trying out manufacturing, a few of the products, a few of the styles of the brand in our own plant in the country. Although a larger set of all of the brands and Guess still remains imported, it's imported from our own subsidiaries rather than buying from any third party globally,” he asserted.
“And then the other brand, which we feel could become very big, which we just acquired is adidas Original. So, going head, we'll be banking on licensed brands like Guess, GC, Versace, and adidas Originals, while we keep on growing very aggressively in our TIMEX portfolio,” he concluded.
Today, brands are using the internet, mobile devices, social media, and other digital channels in their day-to-day lives. That has changed consumers' expectations, needs, and wants even while shopping. Purchase behavior now includes online research and perusing customer satisfaction reviews, influencing purchasing initiatives and decision-making. The increasing influence of the digital natives - millennials, Gen-Z, and newer generations is also visibly apparent.
In the fast-changing and challenging environment that the pandemic created, retail companies have had to react to the changing dynamics of customer behavior, evolving market forces, a non-traditional workforce, and above all systemic change brought about by new technologies, start-up disruption, and a huge infusion of funds to invest in the latest that technology has to offer. While most retailers were quick to embrace new technologies, and change their strategy and business models, many of them were slow to revamp their operating models.