Earlier in the June quarter this year, Titan posted its first quarterly net loss in over two decades. With retail stores shut because of the Covid-19 lockdown, the watches-to-jewellery maker’s sales were a washout in April. The company, which is known to be a trendsetter, steadily came up with several initiatives to rise to the occasion.
Under C K Venkataraman, who took over as managing director over a year ago, Titan gave a push to technology and innovations. It also put a sharper focus on gifting and consolidation in order to tick with the new normal. These measures have paid back and the company has achieved a 90 per cent recovery in sales in the September quarter spearheaded by its jewellery segment, Tanishq.
Tanishq, which was at the centre of a controversy three weeks ago over an ad for its wedding jewellery line, was one of the first retail brands to come up with a host of new features after the pandemic struck — such as video selling, appointment-based selling, and virtual try-ons — to enable at-home buying. Today, it engages in about 12,000 live chats a month online across the Tanishq website, WhatsApp and other social media platforms with numbers climbing each day.
“Our overall online business has been galloping post-Covid. It is growing 6.5 times compared to last year,” said Ajoy Chawla, CEO of jewellery division at Titan. Its omnichannel strategy, where buyers shortlisted products online and dropped into the store to pay and collect, has helped it clock sales of over Rs 260 crore in the past couple of months. The average ticket size for such purchases has been over Rs 1.2 lakh. Chawla said these digital initiatives are not only here to stay but to grow as the consumer gets accustomed to the convenience that digital provides. For Tanishq, the share of digital sales in revenue could grow to 20-25 per cent in a year or two from the current 10 per cent, he said.
The jewellery division, which has seen a year-on-year recovery of 98 per cent in Q2, is already witnessing double-digit growth this festive month compared to last year’s festive season. With Dhanteras around the corner, when jewellery demand is at its peak, Chawla is spending sleepless nights over how to spread out the customer footfall so that social distancing and safety norms are not compromised.
“We have tried to design the offers in such a way that they are spread out over 30 days and end a day before Dhanteras. We are requesting customers to come in earlier and complete their purchases,” said Chawla. For those who will want their product billing or delivery done on the day of Dhanteras, the company is planning to deliver their purchases to their homes.
Apart from the standard procedures that have been put in place to maintain safety norms, the company has set up separate counters for coins (gold coins are in high demand during Dhanteras). It has also set up a central control room at its flagship plant in Hosur, Tamil Nadu, from where all the stores in the country can be tracked remotely.
While sales have been good during the festive month, the company is also pinning its hopes on a strong wedding season as several marriages were deferred in the first and second quarters for the latter half of the year.
The watches and wearables division, which accounts for 12-15 per cent of the revenue, was the worst hit after the Covid outbreak as people began working from home and watches were no longer seen as an adornment.
Suparna Mitra, CEO of the watches and wearables division, said when the markets started opening up after the lockdown, gifting — which is a strong platform for watches — got an additional push as the idea of “self-gifting” became popular. “Consumers were looking forward to rewarding themselves for having coped with the lockdown. They were also looking to celebrate important milestones that they had missed out on during the lockdown,” said Mitra, the first woman CEO at Titan, who took over in April as the lockdown began.
The company has curated a “Gift a Titan Smile” initiative with an attempt to revive sales. While the division’s recovery rate has been the slowest among all segments at 55 per cent in Q2, the company hopes sales will improve during the festive season.
Titan has several collections lined up across all brands, including Sonata, Fastrack and Raga, in the coming months. The division has also focused on product innovation and has come up with Titan Pay, the country’s first contactless payment watch, in collaboration with the State Bank of India. The Bengaluru-headquartered company has also launched a series of Fastrack lockdown watches with humorous slogans linked to the lockdown.
With a similar approach towards product innovation, the eyewear segment has rolled out anti-fog glasses, antiviral frames and patented clear sight lenses. While the sales of its anti-fog glasses have more than doubled in the past two months, the anti-viral lenses will be available in all its 560 stores within a month.
While the eyewear segment has seen a revenue recovery rate of 66 per cent in the September quarter recording an income of Rs 94 crore, the company doesn’t see an immediate turnaround. Witnessing stagnant sales in the large-format stores (LFS) such as Shoppers Stop and Lifestyle, the company has decided to exit this sales channel within a quarter.
“The LFS channel did not make sense. This is a very high-cost channel and you have to really pay to be there,” said Saumen Bhaumik, CEO of eyewear division at Titan.
Other segments of Titan comprising Indian dress wear, fragrance and accessories have seen a decline of 48 per cent in the second quarter, but the company will continue to invest in these channels. Ethnic wear brand Taneira, the company’s youngest brand, launched its 13th store in September and will continue to expand its footprint in the country.
With explorations considered a constant at Titan, the company is likely to continue to hold on to that essence during these testing times.