Jaquar's facets, beyond faucets

In 1986, a brand called Jaquar was launched by the makers of Essco faucets (1960), in a bid to create a premium end of the consumer spectrum for the category. Twenty-five years later, the faucet-maker is making a lot more than faucets, and promising ‘Complete Bathing Solutions'.

Jaquar is not alone in that space today — so are many others, Indian and international. The brand which is best recalled by the marketing fraternity for its category-elevating ‘Too good to resist' campaigns thought it was time to re-invent the brand. Beginning last month, the line that defined the market leader in bath fittings, Jaquar, has begun to change across India and the 20 countries it supplies to. Was it yet another ‘repositioning'? And why?

BrandLine asked Rajesh Mehra, Director and Promoter of Jaquar, why the company sought to shift from a line as successful and entrenched as ‘Too good to resist'. He noted that the agency entrusted with the brand restructuring work, Zeppelin, got back with the same feedback initially, after speaking with stakeholders in four metros — architects, dealers and consumers.

Says Mehra, “On brand recall and trust, Jaquar, by default, remains the first choice, is what they found. They also found that people were still very fond of the campaigns we ran, featuring the robbers being captivated by Jaquar faucets, and readily associated Jaquar with its tag line ‘Too good to resist'. But we're experiencing a transition. It's been 25 years. We are much more than a faucets company today. We need to reconnect with customers and give the brand a youthful, fresh look.”

The shift in communication is in line with a shift in the number of growth paths. It is now present as three broad brands, Essco, Jaquar, and Artize at the extreme upper-end. While a full set of bath fittings can be had from Jaquar for Rs 5,000, the range extends to faucets going up to Rs 15,000. An Artize-fitted bathroom will cost upwards of Rs 30,000.

The ‘lifestyle' brand Artize and ‘premium bath solutions' brand Jaquar offer faucets, sanitaryware and wellness products (spas, whirlpools, shower enclosures, geysers and such). Lighting is another vertical where Jaquar has ventured into. The company has supplemented its core expertise in manufacturing faucets by forging partnerships, domestic and international, for each of these new product lines. On the distribution end, it is reaping the benefits of the foundations it laid in 1986, with the launch of Jaquar. It is not just the television industry where distribution is hailed as God.

Distribution is God

“When we launched Jaquar, we brought in a new way to set up distribution on a mass scale. Until then, manufacturers dealt with dealers in different parts of the country. We appointed State-wise distributors, with the focused task of stock-taking and providing logistics support to local dealers. Stock availability became a lot more efficient, even with the large range we had to offer. The dealers could understand the logic. It worked,” reflects Mehra.

It still seems to be working. The category has exploded in the last 10 years, according to Jaquar. When the brand was launched in 1986, hardly 15 per cent of the market was organised, notes Mehra. In 2000, the company claims to have registered a turnover of just Rs 100 crore. The last 10 years have seen the company grow to ten times its size, with faucets continuing to remain the core business. Of Rs 1,000 crore in turnover, other verticals accounted for less than Rs 100 crore. And brand-wise, Essco and Artize together accounted for less than Rs 100 crore in FY 2011. Jaquar is expected to remain the biggest grosser for the company that claims to have grown by 30 per cent last year. But it is raring to go beyond faucets and bath fittings. On the sales split, consumer buying accounts for 70 per cent of all sales, with institutional selling contributing the rest. This ratio hasn't changed much, notes Mehra.

“We entered the other verticals only in the last four to five years. We have been making faucets for the last 51 years, and obviously that is the largest. But we expect to be among the top three brands in sanitaryware alone in this financial year,” says Mehra. Asked to put a number on the target for the segment, he quotes Rs 250 crore. That, according to him, will allow the company overall growth of 50 per cent in the year. Ambitious, one would think. But he defends the numbers.

Jaquar as a group sells through 1,600 ‘authorised' outlets and countless others in India, with 90 per cent of these outlets being ‘exclusive' to Jaquar, according to Mehra. He claims that the company has received ‘overwhelming response' to its sanitaryware. Time will tell if the number is achievable, but Jaquar will do what it takes, assures Mehra. A Rs 25-crore multimedia campaign is about to kick off. At 21 different cities, its ‘Orientation Centres' are welcoming stakeholders to experience these solutions. These Centres do not sell products.

The Jaquar's new clothes

It will be interesting to see how the brand, which started television advertising in the category in India in 1994, goes about its new campaign. The intent back then was to make the category aspirational. In Mehra's words, the thinking then was that as Jaquar's product propositions were superior quality and a different standard, they could not be left to the consumers to decipher. There had to be a push. The mandate now is quite different, and the campaign will go beyond print and television.

“We are in the process of revamping our Web site and an e-campaign to our huge database of customers will get under way too. For stakeholders such as architects, we will be launching a quarterly newsletter that is relevant to them. The ad campaign will have three key elements – ‘Complete Bathing Solutions', launch of sanitaryware products, and an aggressive push for Artize, which was launched in 2008,” explains Mehra.

The competitive scenario has expanded today. If the Kohlers of the world are making bold statements, German brand Grohe is asking Indians to ‘Enjoy Water' and has even launched a mid-segment range Bauline, with an entry price of Rs 10,000 (for one set of bath fittings).

An architect BrandLine spoke with notes that Jaquar has forged multiple partnerships over the years, allowing it to compete with the international brands coming in. But she is quick to add, on condition of anonymity: “With bath fittings, Jaquar is still up there in terms of customer perception. But with sanitaryware, it will be a while before it can shake up the market. There are different sets of competitors across price points.”

While players such as Parryware, Hindware and Cera play from the mid-segment on, the likes of Duravit and Kohler bring up the upper end in sanitaryware. Mehra notes that while the perception that international brands are better is true for every category, the Indian customer is a little more evolved now than 15 or 20 years ago.

He says, “Every brand which is worth anything is here in India today, and that has given exposure to consumers here. They are now intelligent enough to understand that not everything that comes from abroad is the best. That has to do with the Indian industry and how it has delivered quality products over the years.”

Jaquar made a foray into the UK in 1996, but admits that it started small, and the ‘real thrust' on exports has come about in the last five to six years. It currently has a presence in 20 markets, ranging from the Far East to West Asia to Africa. But the real growth in exports, admits Mehra, is yet to come. “We need to break the jinx about the apprehensions on Indian products back then. Once trust is established, we have seen good growth. In the next two to three years, we expect 12 to 15 per cent of revenues from exports,” adds the Jaquar spokesperson.

In all its expansion, across geographies and categories, the quality proposition that saw the birth of Jaquar 25 years ago hasn't been forgotten. The company manufactures its own faucets, while the sanitaryware is outsourced through five OEMs (original equipment manufacturers) it has tied up with.

As Essco converts the unorganised segment, Jaquar will woo the ‘mass mid-segment', perhaps bordering on the premium, and Artize will attempt to lure the more evolved consumers. We'll have to wait and watch if Jaquar remains too good to resist as a complete bathing solutions provider.

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