Why do Indians feel compelled to choose international luxury brands? After all, there are many homegrown brands on which one can spend great sums of money, and we all know that high-end purchases in India are large and growing quickly. But money spent does not make luxury. What Indian luxury brands need is true service and proper packaging. In short, they need to understand their customers better.
My wife loves Indian clothes and adores the creativity of Indian designers. However, she is not just buying something to wear. She is buying service and an experience. The clothes may look great, but if she needs any alteration, it is a nightmare. And it is not just the question of after-sales service?the service itself is a disaster. International brands, on the other hand, understand service and the true meaning of luxury.
Readers may say that I am merely promoting my own company, which is an international brand, but let me explain with more examples outside the hospitality industry. My wife bought something from Gucci in Delhi which later needed alteration and dry cleaning. Gucci did the alterations, of course, and they also offered to courier another item from Mumbai, which they thought would suit her, given the alterations she requested. This is not only great service, but also great business.
The Gucci alterations and couriered garment took two days. Compare this to her experience with a very well known and much-hyped designer in Delhi. A week in advance of an important family function, she bought a dress from this said designer. She wanted some alterations done and the shop agreed. However, after a week when she went to retrieve the dress, no alterations had been made and she had only four hours to attend the event. The designer just disagreed to alter the dress; she could take it ?as it is? or get her money back. Fortunately, we were able to pick up something from Armani.
These service and packaging failures are not one-off incidents. They are endemic to the Indian luxury space. You might suggest that women are fussy with their clothes. The educated person would say she is focused on details. I am a simple person, but I appreciate quality.
Recently, I had the good fortune to visit Bangalore. I found a jacket, which I liked, but could not spend much time in the shop and, therefore, could not take a decision on the spot. I had casually mentioned that I would be in Delhi for a few days. The shop, Etro, offered to send the jacket to another store in Delhi (from a different brand) so that I could try it again. No obligation to purchase was implied. I bought the jacket.
This kind of experience gives confidence to international brands that proper luxury service means going above what is merely required to deliver experiences that will ?wow? the customer. One might think an Indian designer, less well known than Etro, would want to impress a customer with their service to help build their brand. Instead, they focus on their ego. So when people say that Indian brands do not understand luxury, the issue is actually only with packaging and service. I recently read an article, which predicted that the number of Indian millionaires will increase to over 400,000 by 2015. The winning luxury brands are the ones who can appeal to this segment. In the long run, Indian brands that stop running after celebrities and politicians and start learning how to package their product properly will be the winners. To do that, the brands must learn to understand their customers better.
Deepak Ohri is CEO of lebua Hotels & Resorts. He can be reached at deepak@lebua.com