'Amkette’s strengths are product development, building relationships and innovative marketing programs'

Allied Electronics and Magnetics owns the popularly known brand ‘Amkette’.
The company is poised to jump into digital lifestyle products with MP3 players,
USB drives and digicams. Rajiv Bapna, as head of Amkette, is working hard to
increase the brand’s visibility among partners and end-users. He has selected
40 B-and C-class cities to push his digital media and lifestyle products.

Traditionally a storage media company, Amkette, recently launched its
high-end keyboards and mice, entering the peripherals market. What was the
reason behind this shift?

 Amkette has always been active in the peripherals business. But our products
were targeted at the entry- and mid-level segment. We recently launched our A
series range of high-end keyboards and mice, making an entry in this category as
well. So, it is not that we have entered the peripherals segment, since
peripherals has been one of the major business divisions within the company.

What is your focus area for the current year?

This year, we will focus on 40 B and C-class cities for the next six months.
We have also identified two SBUs as our major growth areas. One is the digital
media and the second is the digital lifestyle products.

In the digital media space, we have been the leader in re-writable
media like floppy diskettes. Our focus for the current year will be on optical
rewritable media which are the DVD-RWs and the CD-RWs. These, in time to come,
will become the main data storage area, replacing floppies.

In digital lifestyle products, we have announced the Series A
range of peripherals, which are primarily higher-end keyboards and mice with
unique features.

What is this three-step program?

The first step is strengthening of relationships through our ‘Rev’
program. It includes dealer meets and other channel bonding shows. We have
already begun this program in Mumbai with 22 partners. This will being followed
by several exciting schemes to generate enthusiasm in B and C-class cities.

Over the year, we have realised that our annual carnival
excites our partners tremendously. And our second step is to make this event
more exciting. This is a two or three day event held in an exotic location and
we get overwhelming response from our partners for participation in this event.

The third part is building visibility in 40 B-and C-class
cities that we have selected. A whole range of programs have been worked out to
increase customer level interface in these regions.

How will you build brand visibility?

Through end-user exhibitions. We also have a very successful end-user
program, called the Enjoy Amkette Program, which was started in August 2003.
This is a loyalty program for regular users, among our two million
customer-base.

Under this program, users can make purchases offline and
redeem their points online. We have a special section on our website for people
who have enrolled in the EAP. And we will contact all these people in the 40
targeted cities in the next six months. We will brief them about the events
being held by us and how can they can participate and benefit from it.

These are the primary activities to build up the reseller and
customer contact.

What channel strategy does Amkette follow?

We have an unique channel model, and were among the first to work on this
FMCG model. We call our products fast moving computer goods (FMCG). Till the
launch of Series A, none of our products were above Rs 500 price bracket.

Most of our products are consumables in nature. And it is
very important that we have a regular distribution network in place. So we have
500 distributors in the 110 cities we are present in. And there are over 5,000
retailers and resellers.

Distributors act as a fulfillment agent while the primary
sales is done by retailers or resellers. And our sales team constantly engages
with these channel partners on a monthly basis to work out any operational
issues.

What are Amkette’s main strengths, vis a vis its
competitors?

Amkette’s main strengths are product development, building relationships and
innovative marketing programs.

We believe very strongly in customer service. Even for floppy
disks we are the only company which provides lifetime warranty. All our 150
products are very well supported in terms of after-sales support and warranty.

And we don’t depend on our disti system for support. We
have support centers in 10 cities, where customers can immeidately get redressal
if they have any issues. Service is also available through our distribution
network.

A single unhappy customer is a matter of concern for us. So
it does not matter whatever it costs, we go to great lengths to keep our users
happy.

VINITA BHATIA