Indiantelevision.com Team

(25 July 2007 9:00 pm)

BANGALORE: The Kolkata based GKB Lens (GKBL) has opened its flagship and fourth store at the high street MG Road in Bangalore.

This is GKB’s 35th store overall and the 18th store to be launched since the beginning of 2007. By year end, GKBL expects to ramp up this number to 50 stores and cross the 150 mark by 2010.

GKB plans to increase its current presence from nine cities to 35. This would include presence in all the state capitals and some second and third tier cities. By the end of 2007, GKBL plans to double its current square footage of 35,000. To that effect, GKB has booked around 40 retail outlets in malls and high streets in major cities across the country.

The special attraction of the Bangalore flagship store is a designer wear contact lens clinic of Johnson & Johnson and Bausch & Lomb, designed and based on the international standards. Contrary to the normal practice of the contact lens clinic being an closed door serious set up, a new innovation has been crafted with an open lounge with vibrant colors and ambience.

A coffee and coke vending machine, a plasma TV and piped musicals form part of this clinic. It has more of a party look for today’s youth who intend to make a style statement of ‘see better look better.’

The organized retail eyewear market is worth around Rs 10 billion and caters to just 2-3 per cent of the total market size. The organized space has been dominated by national players such as GKB, Lawrence & Mayo, a new entrant Titan Eye+, and regional players such as Dayal’s, Bunton and Laxmi in North India and single city players with multiple outlets like Chennai’s Turikhia and Bangalore’s Mulani’s among others.

GKB Lens (GKBL), the marketing arm of the group ended the year (31 March 2007) with a turnover of around Rs 400 million and has been growing at about 30-40 per cent per annum.

GKBL GM-sales H V N Raj expects to close the current fiscal ending 31 March 2008 with revenues of around Rs 600 million on the back of GKB’s new stores expansion this year. By 2009, GKBL GM-marketing Sujan Pandit expects the revenues to cross Rs 2.5 billion.

“Over the last few years, the Indian retail has witnessed rapid transformation. Rising disposable income and increase in brand consciousness among the young generation have been one of the key drivers of our major expansion,” said Raj.

GKBL spends around Rs 20 million annually for mass communications and ATL and BTL campaigns which include advertisements in magazines, billboard hoardings, customer loyalty programs, cross brand promotions, etc.

In a three month campaign starting December 2006, the company spent Rs 4.8 million towards an advertisement blitz in all genres of magazines and periodicals. TVC’s form a latter part of the media plan after a sufficient number of GKBL outlets are open, according to Pandit. JWT handles the creative work and media is handled by Mindshare.

GKBL has positioned itself as a lifestyle and up-market brand that will try and cater to all the segments of the market. It has recently adopted the European mode of display of optical wear and upgraded its stores. According to Raj, each leased store costs around Rs 10 million to Rs 12.5 million to set up.