Weston plans revival with Rs6,000 flat TV

Offering to be priced 40% below rivals.

Weston, the largest-selling colour TV brand in the mid-1980s, is making a comeback with a 21-inch flat-screen colour TV priced at Rs 5,590, roughly 40 per cent cheaper than the average market price.

Dixon Technologies, which owns the brand, is planning to launch two to three television models in time to cash in on the cricket World Cup beginning next month.

The TV is being positioned as a cost leader in its category. "The basic model offers mono sound but comes with 250 channels, a remote control, child lock and other features. It will be the cheapest flat-screen TV in the market," says Atul B Lall, president and CEO, Dixon Technologies.

The company is putting together a team to recreate the brand and re-launch it nationally. "Though the brand has been active in UP and Punjab for some time, we are rolling it out nationally and will offer colour TVs and DVDs," says Lall. The company, incidentally, is the largest contract manufacturer of DVDs for Onida, Philips and TCL.

Weston, which disappeared from the national market following competition from brands like BPL, Videocon and Onida in the late 1980s, also saw its export market crash with the collapse of the USSR.

It was in 1994 that Dixon Technologies was set up and started out as a contract manufacturer for LG Electronics. Today, it is the largest supplier of colour TVs to LG and also makes air conditioners and microwave ovens for the company.

Dixon, with manufacturing plants in Jammu, Mohali, Noida, and Dehradun, has the capacity to make 2.5 million colour TVs a year. "The sheer scale of manufacturing is one of the reasons that we can offer a flat CTV for about Rs 5,000," explains Lall.