Titan targets Rs 50 cr sales from sunglasses

The Rs 960 crore Titan Industries is targeting Rs 50 crore of business from its sunglasses business.

The company is also planning to tie up with coffee parlour chains Barista and Cafe Coffee Day to sell its recently launched Fastrack sunglasses.

Titan, which is known more as a watch and jewellery manufacturing company, has been working on to widen its product portfolio.

Ajoy Chawla, business head of Titan's accessories and licensed brands, said: "We have launched the Fastrack sunglasses in Bangalore, Delhi, Mumbai, Chennai, Kolkata, Pune and Ahmedabad. By the end of the fiscal this range would be introduced in about a dozen cities.

Following a national roll-out by March, 2005, we expect to generate revenues of Rs 15 crore from sunglasses in fiscal 2005-06. We have set a target of Rs 50 crore sales from sunglasses in the next four years."

Chawla was in Ahmedabad on Wednesday to launch the eye gear collection.

Titan has so far launched 50 designs under the Fastrack brand of sunglasses, while the company has decided to introduce 30 new designs during December, 20 designs in January and 30 designs would added during February 2005.

The Indian sunglasses industry is pegged at Rs 330 crore of sales in which Rs 230 crore is generated by unorganised players. Ray-Ban holds the largest stake among organised players with sales of Rs 38 crore.

"While Ray-Ban is targeting the premium segment with its higher priced products, Titan would be aiming the Indian youth with its products priced between Rs 695 and Rs 1,895. This will help to shift the focus of the medium segment of the sunglass consumers to the Fastrack range.

"The sunglass market in India has been showing a faster growth rate in the last two-three years and Titan is planning to claim a major stake of this segment," Chawla said. He said Titan is planning to launch new products in the personal accessories segment as Chawla said Titan would be a complete personal accessories brand in the next few years.

"I am not in a position to divulge details about the products being planned to be launched as currently we are working on them. But we have decided to strengthen the Titan brand with a range of products," he said.

"While we would be selling through departmental stories like Pantaloons and talks are on with Westside, also a Tata enterprise, we also have started negotiations with coffee chains like Barista an Cafe Coffee Day. A marketing tie-up is also possible with Crossword. We are also coming up with our televisions commercials which would be on air by March," Chawla said.

Titan is a joint venture between the Tata group and the Tamilnadu Industrial Development Corporation.

The company commenced operations in 1987 under the Titan Watches brand name. In 1994 the company diversified into the jewellery segment under the Tanishq brand.