'Fair and Handsome' Now 'Smart and Handsome'

January 10, 2025 11:39

Ishita Ayan Dutt/Business Standard

Consumer firm Emami on Thursday announced its rebranding of Fair and Handsome' to 'Smart and Handsome'. This comes almost two decades since its launch in 2005.

The new brand will expand its product portfolio from face cream and face wash to become a complete male grooming brand with an addressable market size of Rs 17,850 crore (Rs 175 billion). The addressable market size for Fair and Handsome is Rs 759 crore (Rs 7,59 billion).

Mohan Goenka, vice-chairman and whole-time director of Emami, explained that the rebranding was done after extensive research. "We saw that there is a bigger opportunity in the male grooming space than just sticking to the brightening space."

He also said that the size of the brand is expected to grow to Rs 1,000 crore (Rs 10 billion) in three to four years from Rs 250 crore (Rs 2.5 billion). A new range of products across the male grooming segment is expected in the next 3 to 4 months. The new face of the brand is Kartik Aaryan.

The rebranding comes at a time when the male grooming portfolio of the company has seen a decline. According to the company's investor presentation after the September quarter results, Emami's male grooming range performance was down 13 per cent in Q2FY25 and 9 per cent in H1FY25.

On the rebranding exercise, Goenka pointed out that the brand name had changed about two years back in the international market. However, Fair and Handsome continued in the domestic market even as most FMCG companies redefined the 'fairness' expression to make it more inclusive.

Emami said at that point of time, research had shown that across the landscape -- rural and urban -- in the male consciousness, fairness was not a regressive term.

"Every company has gone through the exercise of name change but we continued with Fair and Handsome all this while. But consumer behavior is changing, the vocabulary is changing," Goenka said, adding that it was a "big, bold move".

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