Kapil Kapoor, COO, Timex Group USA
Watches today are no more a time keeping tool. Yet they have their own relevance as an accessory. The times are tough and with established giants like Titan in the market, players like Timex are trying to find their niche in the Indian market. Timex came to India in 1990 in association with Tata’s Titan. In 2000, it however, decided to go alone. Kapil Kapoor, COO, Timex Group USA, talks to Priyanka Kumari of Pitch, about the challenges Timex faced after venturing out alone, the changes the watch industry is going through and how it is overcoming those challenges. Kapoor has been with the Timex Group since 2000. He is the man largely credited for a profitable turnaround of Timex’s business in India.
His career spans over 20 years starting with Nestle India and then Bausch & Lomb, where he was part of the start up team that launched Ray Ban sunglasses and the Bausch & Lomb vision care range in India.Excerpts from the interview:
It’s a personal observation, not any research report – that most of the youth today don’t wear watches as they carry time on their gadgets like cellphones. Do you agree? And how are you overcoming this challenge?
While yes, people no longer need a watch to tell the time — car dashboard has it, system, laptop, cell phones; everything you look at, has a clock. If I have to look for time, I usually look at one of my electronic devices. Despite the threat, the watch is no longer a time keeping unit. It’s not a luxury but it’s an accessory. And it’s becoming a right accessory for the right occasion. If you have a sporty look, you need a sporty watch, if you have got a dressed up look and you want to go for an interview, you need the right watch, if you are going to a wedding you need a watch for that, so for all the occasions you need the right kind of watch.
How are you trying to wean away the loyal audience of Titan, which has got the largest market share?
They have done a good job. I do not take away anything from what they have done. They have grown their market very successfully, but I don’t think they cater to the niches with that much credibility as we can. Therefore, as a brand Timex, if you are looking for a sporty kind of collection, true genuine sports, we are the only international brand, with international technology, but with domestic touch.
Also, Timex is a brand with a lot of youthful energy, it tends to be sporty. We have associated Timex with cricket. We had Bret lee as our brand ambassador. So that’s been one of the things we have had as a defining and differentiating feature for our product and our brand. Now, working with Tarun Tahiliani – our new collection – one of the things we are trying to do is address the segment of the opportunity of having rare, true, ethnic Indian watch.
So is this Tarun Tahiliani collection too targeted at the youth?
For Tarun’s collection, our target is actually the wedding segment. People who go to a wedding wearing an Indian outfit, an ethnic outfit and need the right accessory for it. The collection was generated keeping in mind this need. The Indian women and her ethnic wear really sets her apart from the women outside. We thought, when they dressed like that, what is the watch they put on, do they have the right kind of watch.
So how do you plan to market the collection?
The collection has two categories. While, the high-end watches would be called Tarun Tahiliani, the more affordable range would be called ‘OTT by Timex’. The collection is a lot more like jewellery with lots of zadau. The watches cut across from mid-premium, ‘yes aspirational’ but not necessarily luxury. It goes to the luxury segment, but not only exquisitely luxury. We plan to distribute it through Timex’s Time Factory stores, through Tarun’s stores, Kimaya and Khazana.
How is the watch buying behaviour different in India than that in the USA?
Well, I think watch consumption overall can be very different in different parts of the world. The consumers in USA are buying a lot more on the internet in the US than they buy it here. Here the consumers like to go out and try their watches. Also, they buy a lot more sports watches in the US, than they buy it here. People still like more dress watches here.
Any particular brand of Timex that is doing well in India and why?
I think there are certain collections we have here. One is Timex Cognoscenti, which does better in India. The reason is that it has been designed specifically for the Indian market.
After your partnership ended with the Tatas in 2000, what were the challenges that the company faced and how did you overcome them?
Among other things, we were mainly a manufacturing company. We had to set up our own sales and distribution, which we did very effectively. We were at the wrong end of the business, like as you said, people had stopped buying watches for time-keeping, but they were buying watches as an accessory. Moreover, accessory needs you to introduce new models every year and phase out old models, so we had to change our whole manufacturing and supply chain strategy. We had to get out of fabrication and we had to get into building network of vendors that could quickly change around into new models every year. So we had to redefine our entire back-end operation, reposition our brand at the front end. Complete set of challenges, build the brand up, be seen as a brand and its unique identity and all those. And we were loss making, soon after that we had to change the business model and make it profitable, which we did. There were whole lot of things, that we faced but then we had to address and be able to go after the market opportunities.
The Time Factory is a multi-brand store. What is the reason behind this? Why wouldn’t you want to have exclusive Timex brands only?
Consumers typically don’t like to buy in mono-brand stores. They prefer to go to stores where they can see 8 to 10 brands and then decide. Timex is the anchor brand in all the Time Factory stores.
We are also planning to expand the number of outlets to 100 as compared to 65 currently.
What has been your marketing budget for 2010? And by how much do you want to increase it?
The marketing budget for 2010 has been Rs 15 crore and we are planning to expand the budget substantially in the year 2011 by about another 30 per cent
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