Epson India has planned to push its range of hardware, as well as, con-sumables
through retail outlets across India. By next quarter, Epson plans to stron-gly
promote retail brand pro-motions for its entire range of products. In Mumbai, it
has already kick started the program with approximately 25 and 50 stores in
hardware and consumables respecti-vely. "Epson's range of prin-ters will
be promoted thro-ugh the multi-brand outlets, while products like cartri-dges
and other consumables will be solely sold through consumable stores. This retail
plan will happen in phases-in the first phase, the focus will be solely on
metros, while in the second phase it would be the B and C class cities. In
metros like Bangalore, 10 consumable partners have been identified and even
printer partners are being identified, which should be completed any-time
now," said Bangalore based BR Muralidhar, Busi-ness Manager (Consumables).
In fact, Epson has gone to the extent of appointing an agency to identify the
correct retail partners to rope in this new program. "Many vendors are
getting into the retail promotions, but it's impor-tant to adapt the correct
route. Branding and visibility of the products would be automatically increased
and would have to be done with the right partners. The agency will help us
identify the right partners, who would be focused on Epson and also keep track
of prices in the future. We want these partners to obviously focus largely on
Epson and also not deal in compatibles. There-fore the compatible stores would
also be named Epson Cartridge Stores," added Muralidhar.
The Epson Cartridge stores would be on a similar line of HP Original
Cartridge Store, which was started some time back. "When the vendor plans
such new strategies, they should also keep in mind the partners, who have been
dealing earlier with their pro-ducts, especially consumables. It's difficult
to comment on the success or failure of this new concept because many of us are
still not aware about their retail plans. We will have to wait and watch on how
the vendor plans work out," said Nixit Shah, Proprietor of RM Enterprises.
In fact, Epson's Regional Manager (West), RV Ramprasad was positive about
this new move and said, "With these new stores in place, we would be able
to reach a wide audience, especially the end-users. Now with the agency
appointed, we could also keep track of partners and price points of
products."
Nancy Sudheer
Mumbai