The product will be manufactured in India by Jolen International Ltd in technical collaboration with Laboratoire Nouveau of the US. Currently, Godrej enjoys a 40-45 per cent market share in the Rs 180 crore hair dyes market. The other two players are the French multinational L'Oreal and JK Helene Curtis' `Tru Tone' hair-dye. The hair-dye market is segmented into three: liquid, premium powders and popular powders.

The market for hair dyes is growing at 25-30 per cent in value terms and has a potential to grow even faster considering the fact that only 10 million people in India use hair dyes.

Jolen also plans to launch a blackhead remover strip under the flagship brand Jolen, priced at Rs 10 each. Currently, the major player in this segment is HLL with its Ponds blackhead strip, also priced at Rs 10. However, Jolen plans to penetrate and win over the trade by giving higher margins than the competition. While HLL is giving 9 to 10 per cent margins, Jolen plans to pay as high as 20 to 28 per cent margins to the trade.

In the recent months, Jolen has introduced several new products including Jolen moisturising cold cream in packs of 50gm (Rs 20), 100 gm (Rs 35), 200 gm (Rs 65) and 500gm (Rs 130); perfume bleach, rejuvenating massage cream, cold cream and herbal shampoo.

Jolen's quick succession of new product launches forms part of its aggressive marketing plan drawn by the company early this year. To start with, Jolen in May 1999, changed its distribution set up from being wholesale-centric to a full fledged distribution channel with stockists and retailers in its fold. ``We realised that the earlier set up was restrictive and not an effective channel,'' says A K Wali, marketing manager, Jolen International Ltd.

Initially it plans to capture the Northern and Western regions and gradually move to the East and South.

The company has so far appointed 14 super stockists and over 80 stockists in each town in the two regions. ``The emphasis is on reaching out to people in small towns,'' says Wali.

Among its various marketing initiatives, Jolen, also took steps to curb and counter availability of fakes of its products and brand name. In fact, from May '99, the company has begun using a three-dimensional hologram on all its products.

The company is also currently streamlining its manufacturing operations in order to expand its activities. In the recent past, it has also increased its visibility by advertising through print as well as electronic medium. The company posted a sales turnover of Rs 3 crore by the end of year 1999 and projects to touch Rs 8 crore by the end of the year 2000.