For the export market, Sanjay Malhotra has his own low-priced brands of perfumes as well as deals in versions (with similar sounding names) of popular perfume brands like Issey Miyake and Estee Lauder.
This is his bread and butter. For the domestic market, he's ready to launch his first perfume brand: L' Sherri Fontana.
With that, Malhotra, managing director of the Rs 10 crore (Rs 100 million), Aerol Formulations Ltd, wants to be the man of the masses. He believes that the two-dozen products he will launch under the L' Sherri Fontana brand name, will find takers in the price-sensitive and slow moving Indian perfume market.
Priced between Rs 199 and Rs 350, his products will be positioned as a mass-market brand. Currently, the products are being test marketed in B-grade stores in the Delhi region.
In India, the size of the organised perfume and deodorant market is about Rs 150 crore {Rs 1.5 billion (perfume is about Rs 50 crore)} while the grey market is four times bigger. Cosmetics industry experts say that the going may not be easy for Malhotra as the mass perfume market is tough to crack.
Archies' perfume division has been an exception as the company exploits its strong distribution and retail network of 475 stores across the country to push its scents.
"Archies promotes perfumes as a gift item through its stores," says a company source. Archies Ltd's perfume business clocked a turnover of Rs 8 crore (Rs 80 million) in the last financial year.
Yet others like Paresh Gondkar at MKP Distributors Ltd feel that the mid-priced segment is growing. "We want to cater to the middle class segment and plan to launch imported brands like 4711 and Antonio Banderas for that segment." MKP currently imports several premium foreign brands such as Gucci and Hugo Boss.
Malhotra is not unduly worried about his foray in the domestic market. After all, he has been the contract manufacturer of perfumes for companies like Avon, Revlon and Mayar India.
Also, he feels that if his domestic venture flops, he has his traditional business to fall back on. At his factory in Bahadurgarh in Haryana, he manufactures and exports 100,000 perfume bottles a month to the Gulf, the Russia and the US market.
He has developed his own brands such Tycoon, Aqua and Serum for the exports market that he sells for between $4 and $6. He claims that these are being increasingly accepted in the market.
"Only 10 per cent of the products that I export are my own brand names. The rest are versions of other popular perfumes," says Malhotra.