Soon, Bollywood zones in retail outlets

‘Experience’ zones in malls will offer slew of merchandise

MUMBAI: George Lucas, the creator of the Star Wars, while signing up the contract for his first Star Wars film with 20th Century Fox, carved aside the merchandising and licensing (M&L) separately for himself.

Studio bosses didn’t pay much attention at that time, but sure rued as Lucas went on to rake in $9 billion in the course of the next few years.

The message is not lost on Indian movie studios.

Bollywood merchandising is not a new concept really.

Yet, what is interesting is the scale that it has been taken to.

From just one-off examples, which had a few corners dedicated to this a particular movie’s merchandise, we will now see entire Bollywood Experience zones come up at retail stores.

Future Group and Percept have entered into a joint venture through which an initial investment of Rs 50 crore will create Bollywood cafes, theme parks, walk-ins and even museums at Future group’s retail outlets.

The business obviously seems to have become quite profitable for companies to create special experience zones to pull in more customers.

So, while apparels, accessories for men, women and children have generally been the criteria for forming separate zones till now, we have a new one henceforth- Bollywood.

Ajay Upadhayay, president, corporate affairs, Percept, said, “There is no demographic which doesn’t desire to consume Bollywood. Bollywood’ zones will range from a couple of thousand sq feet to a 20,000 sq feet in bigger store formats.”
The joint venture will open such zones in Tier II cities such as Indore and Jaipur.

Experts point out that with rise in organised retail penetration, such initiatives are inevitable.

Shoppers Stop claims to have recorded sales of Rs 5-7crore through merchandise of the movie Om Shanti Om.

The retailer partnered with the makers of the movie to create four special brands which were displayed at various focal points in the shops.

What sold most? “The casual menswear brand,” said B S Nagesh, managing director, Shoppers Stop.

Earlier, kid’s movies such as Hanuman and Krrish raked in huge revenues from simply selling merchandise at retail outlets.

Percept went all out with Hanuman, releasing apparels, games, jewellery, toys and even special ice-cream flavours.

About Rs 5 crore has already been raked in, but the mythological hero is expected to continue to be a revenue stream for some time to come.

On the face of it, merchandising is exploding, but there are few numbers to quote on the size of the sector.

Nalay Parekh, business head, merchandising and overseas marketing, P9 Integrated, a Percept company, said it is quite difficult to arrive at exact figures on the size of the industry now as there is a lack of transparency.

“Rough estimates suggest it should be between Rs 30 and Rs 40 crore. We at P9 have started out with movies and are also looking at opportunities in television.”

The company had tied up merchandising deals for movies such as Saawariya, which, Parekh claims, did well in merchandising despite the movie not performing.  Ultimately, merchandising is perceived as a tool to bring in extra revenues.

But till now, studios like UTV have used M&L more as a promotional tool rather than a revenue stream, but as Siddharth Roy Kapur, chief executive officer, UTV Motion Pictures says this is set to change.

“Earlier we have licensed movies like Rang de Basanti to Coke but that was a promotional deal. The value for us was that it helped us market the movie as saved us on marketing expenditure. Going forward we are looking at it as a separate revenue stream.”

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