Last week, the Rs 480-crore Goodlass Nerolac became the last of the big paint majors to jump into the instant shades market with the launch of Nerolac Colour Scape, an integrated colour matching system designed to be a one-stop colour shop.
Colour Scape will be launched across India by April this year. Initiated by Jenson & Nicholsons Instacolor in late 1996, followed by Berger Paints Colour Bank and ICIs Colour Solutions, tinting machines have become the marketing stunt for all paint majors.
Nerolacs move follows soon after Asian Paints launched Color World earlier in January this year.
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Nerolac Colour Scape will be launched by establishing what the company calls the Nerolac Colour Club, an interactive platform aimed at benefiting both the dealers and the co. As soon as the dealer opts to set a Colour Scape shop, he will become a member of the Nerolac Colour Club.
Colour Scape will cost the dealer Rs 5.95 lakh, compared with Asian Paints Colour World which costs 6.5 lakh and Jenson and Nicholsons Rs eight lakh.
Dealers will have the benefit to avail it through several instalment schemes with a down payment of a minimum of Rs 1 lakh.
The company is aware that such projects have proved expensive for companies like J&N, and will restrain its marketing efforts to potentially viable markets. Hence, it has not set itself an installation target. Though initial responses from the dealers in Mumbai have been encouraging, we will not offer it indiscriminately to every dealer who opts for it. We will have to ensure return on investment, said G Dhananjayan, general manager, marketing.
Colour Scape, however, is not just a colour dispensing machine, it has several added features by which the company expects to change the way paints are sold in this country. While the customer will have access to over 1305 shades and can see how their rooms will look with the help of a visualiser system, the dealer will be able to tip them on the variety of paints.