Bose Corporation's strategy to sell products below the Rs 70,000 range has clicked. Bose is planning to strengthen this strategy by bringing in more products.
In range, Bose home products like Bose Lifestyle systems, wave systems, speakers, headphones and multimedia are a hit, said Ratish Pandey, general manager, Bose Corporation India.
Declining to reveal the company's sales figures, he said the segment has witnessed nearly 60 per cent year-on-year growth.
As part of the mass product category, the company has launched Bose Wave Music system in the market. Priced at Rs 29,000, it is available in platinum white and graphite gray.
For the music system, the company has incorporated waveguide speaker technology and uses proprietary signal processing to improve instrument clarity and definition at all listening levels, said Pandey.
The company plans to adopt dual retail strategy, i.e. set up experience stores and regular company sales and service showrooms in India.
So far, Bose Corporation has set up nine stores in six cities. Full service stores are in Delhi, Bangalore, Mumbai, Chennai, Ahmedabad and Hyderabad. The experienced stores are in Bangalore, Delhi and Mumbai, said Pandey.
Bose to step up exclusive stores
Bose Corporation India will continue to step up the number of its company-owned exclusive retail stores by increasing the number from nine to 16 by March 2007.
Bose, in India, is selling directly through exclusive retail store route rather than going for the traditional distributor-dealer channel that it follows worldwide. It has no plans in the near future to switch to its global channel partnership strategy.
"The stores are mostly rented, so the investments is into staff training," said Ratish Pandey, general manager, Bose Corporation India, when asked about the investment per store. By the end of this fiscal, Bose plans to have 12 stores, making it the company with the maximum number of company-owned stores in the premium audio category.
Currently, the company has retail outlets in Bangalore, Hyderabad, Ahmedabad, Chennai, Delhi, Mumbai and Gurgaon. Bose is targeting an 80 per cent growth in 2005-06 and surpassing the 60 per cent year-on-year growth that it achieved in the past three years. Ratish did not divulge details about the revenues or the number of units that it sells in India.
Besides the retail sales, Bose also operates in the professional sound systems space where it is witnessing growth mainly from demand created from MNCs, premium hotels, auditoriums, and IT and ITES companies.
"We have a dominant share with the ITeS companies with our sound-masking solutions. These enable sound to reduce even in area with 40 to 100 call centre executives," Pandey added.
Bose which has products between Rs 7,900 and Rs 229,000 is realising high-growth in the Rs 150,000-plus category and below Rs 70,000 category. Its products include multi-media speakers, headphones, stereo speaker systems, wave systems, lifestyle music and home-theatre systems.
Bose has a dominant share in the premium retail audio market segment that is estimated at Rs 100 crore (Rs 1 billion).
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