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Titan Eye Plus, the youngest brand from Titan Industries, has been trying to transform eyewear retail through its innovations. In a large unorganised market, the quest of the brand, which manufactures and retails eyewear such as spectacle lenses and frames, is to make a functional product a style accessory. Selling its eyewear at exclusive outlets, its same store sales grew by 40 per cent in 2012-13 (over 2011-12).
The brand has even tapped the Tata Group's Innovation Forum to come up with marketing ideas. It is, afterall, a part of a 26-years-old company, founded by the visionary JRD Tata, that has succeeded in tapping opportunities in industries such as watches and jewellery by bringing innovative products and solutions.
When the company had entered the eyewear market in 2007, it was not as unorganised as the markets had been for watches or jewellery when it had entered them. Eyewear already had some national players. Titan Industries had to create differentiation and fast. Being a part of the Tata Group, which has a group-level Innovation Forum that facilitates a bi-annual programme called Challenges Worth Solving (CWS), it became little easier for the company.
It invited ideas from Tata managers through the CWS programme for innovative ideas and received 427 of them in response to this challenge.
One of these ideas was to have an online, do-it-yourself eye-testing that the consumer could administer. As a result, in August last year, the company introduced 'Vision Check', a comprehensive self-administered online vision test, a first by an optical retail chain in the country.
The online test innovation not only helps the company in generating leads to improve its sales, it also provides a four-steps, accurate online eye test that can be done in five minutes by anyone.
Eye Plus' parent is the fourth most-valued company in the $100-billion turnover Tata Group. Its market capitalisation of Rs 25,772 crore is way higher than that of companies such as Tata Power, Tata Chemicals and Indian Hotels Company, and close to that of Tata Steel at Rs 28,845 crore, which trails Tata Motors and Tata Consultancy Services.
Titan Industries reported a 14.3 per cent growth in revenue at Rs 10,213 crore in 2012-13, with jewellery and watches contributing Rs 8,108 crore and Rs 1,675 crore respectively. The other segments of the company that include the eyewear (both Fastrack and Titan Eye Plus) and precision engineering businesses, contributed Rs 414 crore.
"Growth in eyewear was driven by aggressive activation campaigns, new launches in frames and lenses, and enhanced focus on international brands," says Pritesh Chheda, analyst at the brokerage, Emkay Global Financial Services.
With manufacturing to strengthen its backward integration, Titan Eye Plus launched the Titan Advantage lenses in February last year. These are hydrophobic, anti-smudge, anti-static (easier to clean) and anti-fog, cut out for the Indian climate. Bikers with such lenses can ride easy in the monsoons because water droplets roll off them, without leaving any marks. These lenses are priced from Rs 2,000 upwards, and are available at 227 retail outlets in 76 cities across the country.
Eyewear is an estimated Rs 3,500-crore industry in India, with about 15-20 per cent brought in by the branded players. The branded eyewear market is not far behind the watches market which is around Rs 5000 crore. Analysts point out that the head-room for growth in organised play makes it the next opportunity for the company to take up.
"We tend to look at industries which are largely unorganised and offer product and services for the consumer that are very different from what they may have seen in the past," says Ravi Kant, chief executive officer, eyewear division, Titan Industries.
The company had earlier launched 'Switchers' - a range of optical frames with three pairs of side bars. A user could swap the side bars to match with the rest of her outfit. The master plan of Titan Eye Plus is to encourage not just one or two frames for use by a consumer but multiple ones - "Our whole effort is to transform the eyewear category from a functional product to a style accessory with users looking for multiple spectacles for different occassions," Kant says.
Titan Eye Plus is looking at aggressive growth, with plans to add 50 more stores this year, mostly through the franchise route.
"There are norms that exist in every market and then a player comes that changes the rules of the game and raises the standards of the industry. Titan has endeavoured to play that role since inception," Kant says, referring to how its launch of wristwatches, based on quartz technology, transformed the watch industry. The company then launched its jewellery retail chain brand, Tanishq, at a time when the industry was dominated by local players.
Titan Eye Plus competes with Reliance Vision Express, a joint-venture between Reliance Retail and the world's second largest optical products company, GrandVision B.V., which has 172 single-brand stores in 26 Indian cities.
