Paint companies prepare a fresh canvas for retail

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Mumbai, May 15: Even as new entrants like Sherwin Williams, Nippon Paints and many others explore ways of taking paints cans from the dingy paint shops to the large format retail stores, industry experts believe that it will be a long while before organised retailing in the Rs 9,000 crore paint industry in India can actually take off.

As a precursor to organised retail, industry veterans like Asian Paints and Kansai Nerolac, have been steadily launching various initiatives to involve the consumer directly in purchasing of paints.

With the Indian consumer becoming more demanding, retailing in paints is looking forward. The consumer now wants to be involved in every nittygrittiy while doing up their apartments.

The buy-it-yourself (BYI) concept has begun in India with increasing consumer interest at the point of purchase. The initiatives to involve consumers have been going on since a very long time. The colour-tinting machines at the dealer shops, whereby, one can mix and match shades to get the desired colour, has been a hit in the Indian market ever since its first launch in the late nineties. Today there are about 16,000 such machines across India.

In terms of dealer network outlets, Asian paints has about 18,000 outlets, Nerolac has 10,000-12,000 outlets, Berger has 10,000-12,000 and ICI has around 7,000-8,000 outlets. Asian Paints and Kansai Nerolac among others are now planning to take it a step forward.