By Vaishnavi Gupta, Assistant Editor
Jun 22, 2022 / 11 MIN READ
The jewelry division under Titan Company Ltd houses four brands – Tanishq, CaratLane, Zoya, and Mia. Tanishq is the company’s most known brand, while CaratLane is an omnichannel brand and is currently the largest online jeweler. Zoya is their luxury brand and sits on top of the product pyramid, and Mia offers contemporary, workwear jewelry. Titan's jewelry arm is continuously innovating during the pandemic with its right set of strategies to navigate through the current times. It also witnessed a strong recovery in demand after the second wave of the COVID-19 pandemic across its brands.
At IReC (Industry of Retail and E-commerce summit) 2022, Ajoy Chawla, CEO - of Jewelry Division, Titan Company Ltd talked about the changing industry trends, digitization gaining prominence, redefining the consumer experience, and the company’s plans going forward.
The Growing Role of Digitization
The world has seen a lot of disruption due to Covid. Physical retail was significantly impacted and everything was shut down and even e-commerce was shut down during the first wave. But soon the companies realized that in the last several years preceding that they had been investing in digital, online, analytics, and CRM platforms (both the backend as well as the frontend), and it was time to start using those platforms and technologies diligently. Covid was a natural catalyst to these changes and what could have taken maybe a decade has happened in a few months.
The first big change that the brands observed was that the digital adoption by consumers was phenomenal. “To start with, our first step was to ensure that we connect with our customer base. We reached out to 1.4 million customers via telephone calls at the beginning of the pandemic. We have about 8,000 frontline staff and they were also sitting at home and customers were also at their homes. Therefore, we observed that the best way to deploy these 8,000 strong field forces that serve customers every day was to ask them to reach out to customers and check on them. Through these calls, they just have to ensure if the consumer is doing fine or not or if he/she needs any help,” Chawla said.
But thereafter, the company has launched a series of digital initiatives. Firstly, it started doing remote selling, which is video conferencing or video call-based selling. Then the company introduced an endless aisle, which connects all the stores in its retail network to showcase the entire range of products from any part of the country and guarantees to cater to jewelry requirements across all categories and regions at one go.
“Digitally, we have grown our business from Rs 120 crore to Rs 2,800 crore in the last two years. Our digital channels are currently contributing about 12-13 percent of our total sales. It has become a growth engine for us,” he asserted.
Catering to Changing Consumer Behavior
Firstly, the brand is leveraging both WhatsApp and Google to communicate with its consumers. Secondly, most of the conversations with consumers happen on its website and app, where the brand offers a live chat option. Its monthly active users on the website are about 2.5 million while its app has around 4.5 lakh active users.
Thirdly, another way to communicate with consumers is directly at the store, where almost 70-80 walk-ins happen daily. Chawla believes that a real relationship with the consumer gets formed inside the store. He said it’s important to form a relationship between a store staff member and a customer through a physical store visit or maybe through a live chat where there's been a telecom or a video call so there is some physical touch between both parties.
“Today, each of our store staff probably has about 70-100 customers on his/her personal WhatsApp interaction. So if a new collection comes, our store staff directly connects with the consumers and tells them that these new products have been launched and ask them if they want to buy them. The consumers can also reach the staff directly to ask for some product or to customize the product according to their needs,” he explained.
He further elaborated that with the Zoya brand, we have gone to the consumers’ homes with our products as they were not comfortable moving out, especially during the Covid times. They asked us to visit their homes and we used to shortlist the products as per their requirements and visit their homes. With Caratlane too, we have offered a try-at-home option in top cities.
“I believe, in spite of being online, there is a need for the customer to finally experience the product. For instance, in Tanishq, 90 percent of the total sales are happening at offline stores and only 10 percent are purely online. While in CaratLane, 25-30 percent is online, the rest of it is Omni,” he added.
Redefining In-Store Shopping Experience
The physical opportunity for a category like jewelry is huge. 90 percent of the Titan’s final conversion is happening inside the store.
In today’s time, when consumers enter the store they have already done a lot of browsing. They have checked online what they want and come with very specific requirements. They might have even shortlisted some products and have already done a live chat with the store staff. So, the brands have to think about what different can they offer to their consumers in the stores.
Many brands have installed digital screens in their stores to tell stories about the brand or promote the products. But when the customers are physically visiting the store, they are not interested in seeing a digital screen; they want to see the real product. Chawla said brands can tell the story of the authenticity of how the product was made, or how it is actually being created in the factory. “For instance, in Zoya, we actually take the customer through a bespoke journey in which not only the design is co-created with the help of the consumer and the designer, but it also shows how it finally gets crafted in the factory. The consumer is also able to talk to the person who's setting the stone. I think the opportunity to connect customers to how the product is getting created, especially for categories like ours, is very huge,” he added.
Furthermore, Chawla elaborated on their experiment inside the store to enhance the consumer experience. Recently, the company launched and implemented a ‘24 Carat Express’, a gold coin vending machine, in 20 of its stores. The idea came up after observing a huge queue of people inside the store to buy a gold coin during Akshaya Tritiya, Dhanteras, or certain festival days. People had to wait 2-3 hours during that time to get a gold coin; therefore, it introduced a gold coin ATM machine ‘24 Carat Express’.
Another thing that can be done to cater to the changing consumer behavior is having a store that has no cash desk. “I think the customer doesn't get any value added at the cash desk. Many stores have tried it but our jewelry stores have not yet seen it. We are doing this experiment in Mia and we'll probably try it out in CaratLane and Tanishq as well,” Chawla asserted.
READ MORE: How Titan Jewellery has Virtually Brought the Store to Customer's Home?
Road Ahead
Last year, the company added 37 stores. Its plan this year is to expand to 40 more stores.
In the next three years, the company will add close to 100 Tanishq stores, while 50-75 stores each for Mia and CaratLane.
“We are currently present in 220 towns. However, there are at least 300 towns that are relevant for us at this point. In the next three years, we might want to reach 400 towns,” Chawla concluded.
The jewelry division under Titan Company Ltd houses four brands – Tanishq, CaratLane, Zoya, and Mia. Tanishq is the company’s most known brand, while CaratLane is an omnichannel brand and is currently the largest online jeweler. Zoya is their luxury brand and sits on top of the product pyramid, and Mia offers contemporary, workwear jewelry. Titan's jewelry arm is continuously innovating during the pandemic with its right set of strategies to navigate through the current times. It also witnessed a strong recovery in demand after the second wave of the COVID-19 pandemic across its brands.
At IReC (Industry of Retail and E-commerce summit) 2022, Ajoy Chawla, CEO - of Jewelry Division, Titan Company Ltd talked about the changing industry trends, digitization gaining prominence, redefining the consumer experience, and the company’s plans going forward.