Known for its professional hair colour range which is largely used by salons across the country, Henkel is now taking the brand Schwarzkopf closer to Indian consumers with the rollout of crème based hair colour. In a conversation with BrandWagon Online Kartik Kaushik, country head, Henkel Consumer Brands, India and South Asia Export Markets, talks about the company’s plans for the hair care segment. (Edited Excerpts)
The hair colour market is a crowded one in India. What is the idea of entering the segment this late?
At the top, it’s a little empty in the sense that the premium brands portfolio is not so cluttered when compared with the mass brands at the base. That is mainly due to the bright spot in terms of a white spot where there’s a gap. And that’s the gap we tend to fill because there’s been a lot of innovation in the portfolio. The two brands we’ve launched have a lot of firsts, the first being these products have hyaluronic acid for hair, among others.
What percentage of the market share do you aim to capture?
The size of this market is about Rs 5,000 crore and it is a big number. People often talk about skin, oral care among others. But we hardly talk about hair care. We are here to change that. We want to say that of the total Rs 5,000 crore which is dominated by liquid, dye and powder hair colour, 40% is dominated by crème based hair colour and this is the area where we operate in. We aim to capture 25% of the crème hair colour by 2025. That’s very ambitious.
How do you plan to distribute them?
We intend to play the premium segment. As a result, we will select premium stores/retail, e-commerce sites and channel partners. Premium-ness is inherent in the DNA of the brand. As for availability, these products will be made available in the right place for the right set of consumers who are discerning and prefer quality products. Also, post the pandemic, people have become cautious in terms of the kind of products they prefer. People are highly focused on getting good products.
What about marketing plans?
For us, it will be a digital savvy marketing approach. Gone are the days of classical marketing where you can only advertise because you had limited screens and presence. With over-the-top (OTT) platforms and social media, we can now reach out to consumers through various touchpoints. That’s how we intend to reach out to the right TG, at the right time.
What is the kind of pricing strategy you plan to follow? Also what are the numbers of SKUs, you plan to launch?
We plan to launch 18 stock-keeping units (SKUs) across the country. While we plan to retail Simply Colour at Rs 725, Colour Specialist will be sold at Rs 675. We have created a huge global selection of shades for consumers. We’ve actually narrowed down the core products which are also very akin to Indians. People are really experimenting a lot these days. Hence, at the time of entering this space, we decided to keep a big range keeping the international trend into consideration. Even in terms of pricing, we have limited the price despite the fact that the products are from Germany.
To what extent does it depend on the brand’s position?
We have had a long-standing relationship thanks to our professional business. So the brand Schwarzkopf resonates really well with Indian consumers. This is also a reason why we decided to take the product to a larger audience. One of the highlights of this roll-out is that consumers will now have access to world-class products which has 40 range. We will be back in the market right at their doorstep. I think that’s one of the biggest things for consumers. People are really conscious about the quality of the products they use on their hair.
How do you plan to expand further?
We have covered colourisation and all aspects of it. The next obvious step for us to look at a category which involved taking care of the hair post colourisation besides styling. Styling has become an important category as everyone wants to look beautiful in Zoom calls. So naturally, to do so, the next section will definitely be starting with Patrick and what you see standing in what category but everybody wants to look at the video calls everybody wants to look good. There’s no call the back category is also exploding. Unfortunately our sizeable professional portfolio on the style category. And we don’t think this will really help us afford it to the consumer better to go ahead.