Brands
Siyaram’s lost 25% of business during lockdown, expecting better festive season
NEW DELHI: Siyaram’s is looking forward to exploring marketing activities in the coming festive season, starting October, but with a new approach to the media mix, president Shreedhar Soni told Indiantelevision.com on the occasion of a virtual press meet, organised by the brand to announce its ‘Retail Mahakumbh’ initiative.
He shared, “Siyaram’s core marketing activities, as you would have noticed, are mostly centred around the wedding season and the festive season, starting October, which will commence normally as every year. Sure, we have missed our opportunity with the summer sales this year, but we will be sticking to our plans of making the brand popular going ahead. However, we will have a different approach to use the mediums. Greater focus will be moving towards digital marketing. TV and print part will also resume, as we are expecting the market to develop some normalcy by then.”
It is also planning to expand Siyaram’s online business, which currently stands at just 10 per cent. The upcoming ‘Retail Mahakumbh’ will be focussing, among many other things, on training the retailers to promote and sale their products using the digital medium.
VP marketing N Gangadhar added, “We will also be launching some new products in the coming months. As people get more conscious about what they wear and purchase post-coronavirus, we are planning to launch anti-viral and anti-microbial fabrics.”
The fabric is already ready and awaiting some approvals on its efficiency. It will be launched as soon as it gets clearance and the trade channels start moving again.
Additionally, the senior executive team of Siyaram’s also shed some light on how Covid2019 impacted the sector and their business during the lockdown.
President and ED Gaurav Poddar shared, “We were almost non-functional mid-March onwards. There was virtually no production for the past 2.5 months. We lost almost 25 per cent of our business in these months.”
However, he is positive that things will start getting better soon. “Around 150 of our retails shops have already opened in the green zone areas and they are recording somewhere around two-thirds of the normal sales number already, which I feel is not bad.”
He added while exports will take another quarter to get back to normal, the domestic sector will be quicker to improve as there is a lot of pent-up demand among the consumers.
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Brands
Faber-Castell India appoints Sunaina Haldar as director – marketing
With stints at Tata, SleepyCat and ADF Foods under her belt, Haldar is primed to redraw Faber-Castell’s brand story
MUMBAI: Faber-Castell India has poached Sunaina Haldar from ADF Foods, appointing her director – marketing as the German stationery brand looks to muscle up in a category that is rapidly reinventing itself around creativity and self-expression.
Haldar hit the ground running. “My first couple of weeks have been incredibly energising, understanding consumers, visiting markets, engaging with retailers and immersing myself into the world of Faber-Castell Group,” she said.
She arrives with considerable firepower. At ADF Foods, Haldar ran marketing across India and international markets for a portfolio spanning Ashoka, Aeroplane, Camel and ADF Soul. Before that, she was vice-president – marketing at direct-to-consumer mattress brand SleepyCat, where she helmed brand, content and performance marketing. Her résumé also includes a stint leading marketing, new product development and CRM for Tata SmartFoodz at Tata Consumer Products, no small proving ground.
Between corporate roles, Haldar also operated as a fractional CMO for early-stage startups, building marketing strategy and operational structures from scratch, a signal that she knows how to move fast with limited resources.
With 18 years straddling FMCG, D2C and the startup world, Haldar now takes the reins at a brand that has long owned the classroom but is clearly hungry for the living room. In a stationery market where the pencil has become a lifestyle statement, Faber-Castell has picked someone who knows exactly how to sell that story.
