Leading retail in India, Pantaloons started a new line, Home Solutions Retail, and also launched MeLa, its home furnishing brand in September 2005.
Even, Nilkamal, the moulded furniture maker set up @Home, its one-stop solution for the home.
Bombay Dyeing also has plans venture into retail. It has grabbed 35 percent market share in bed linen and 27 percent in bath towels.
To add to all this, the outlets offer a variety of brands as well.
The domestic Indian soft home solutions market (bed, bath and furnishings and so on) is estimated at Rs12,500 crore.
Competition and intensive advertising has led celebrities turning brand ambassadors for leading companies.
For instance, the Wadia group flagship, which had almost single-handedly created the template for fashion advertising in India in the eighties and early nineties with the launch of celebrity faces such as Karan Kapoor and Lisa Ray, had simply dropped off the radar during the later part of the nineties.
It has, in last couple of years, increased its ad budget, while their campaign symbolizes new trends, styles, youth, individuality along with international feel and sex, supported by Bombay Dyeing supermodels Dipti Gujral in 2003 and Gladrags Mega Model 2004, Amita Hotkar last year.
marketing@alchempro.com
