The GenNext makeover

Vanity Case is creating cosmetics brands for foreign companies

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For the 30-something Sameer Kothari, his family business in contract manufacturing of cosmetics was way too plain to do justice to his MBA degree from Cornell University.

So while the Rs 250-crore Vanity Case Group of Companies continued supplying a wide range of skin care products to a host of Indian and multinational cosmetics brands, the young Kothari wanted a quick makeover.

For him, it was not enough that his factories, spread across Mumbai, Thane, Silwara and now Adgaon, Silvasa and Paonta Sahib in Himachal Pradesh, churned out talcum powder, creams and deodorants for well-known desi and MNC brands that you use every day (naming them is a strict no-no, though).

And since he could not launch his own cosmetics brand in India for fear of competing with his heavyweight clients, he's grabbed the next best opportunity.

He has turned Vanity Case into a one-stop shop for product design, formulation, manufacture and packaging for almost all FMCG products such as powders, creams, shampoos, etc.

Vanity Case has also started taking up turnkey projects abroad that help companies there to launch cosmetics brands. In Saudi Arabia it manufactured and packaged 17 products and launched a brand called Icare.

In Yemen it was LVC and Showerfresh in Kenya. The brands created by Vanity Case cater to the mass market. Kothari says that though the company did everything for these brands, it stayed away from distribution as it is a very complicated and network intensive business.

"Our main strength is in delivering mass market products fast, and at one-third the price of its branded counterparts from the West," he says.

In fact, he enjoys taking up turnkey projects as setting up a brand for a client is a longer term business and preferable over short term contract manufacturing operations.

Besides, Kothari needs to aggressively woo new business and launch new products as Vanity Case's contract manufacturing facilities have grown from five factories to 15 in the last three years.

To put the enhanced capacity to use, Kothari is planning to launch 100 products, mostly in the hair and skin care categories, in the next two years. Most of these will be for the brands launched in other countries. This should further boost the company's export earnings which is currently pegged at Rs 30 crore.

However, the success with third party brand launches has finally pushed Kothari to think about introducing a brand of his own. If all goes well, Vanity Case will launch its first brand in Dubai, tentatively named Mayfair. However, there are a couple of other new initiatives from the company as well.

For starters, Vanity Case will cash in on the beauty boom in the country. It is tying up with the New York-based Christine Valmy Institute and will open its first Christine Valmy School in Mumbai in August.

"Seventeen courses covering all elements of skin and hair care will be taught there," says Kothari.

He expects the demand for quality beauty professionals to grow as salons like Kaya, Lakme and Trendz Unlimited expand. Kothari hopes to establish 20 such schools in the next five years and plans to hit Pune, Chandigarh and Bangalore before moving to Delhi.

Interestingly, Kothari is also setting up a design studio in association with an Italian firm to cater to the demands of industrial design in India.

This, of course, is a complete digression from his main business. With a start-up investment of Rs 2.5 crore and armed with a team of 32 designers, the design studio, will also be the BPO for auto component design houses in Italy.

"Component designing involves a lot of tedious work which, though rudimentary, could cost car companies like Rover and BMW upwards of $250 per hour," he says.

In a few years down the line, Kothari expects to get high-end design assignments from domestic and multinational companies. And before he retires at 45 and starts teaching management, Sameer Kothari promises to come up with similar innovative ideas.