Kaya Skin Clinics Festive Initiatives

Who doesn’t want to look beautiful and radiant during festive occasions? Along with shopping the next important aspect during festive seasons for consumers is personal care and beauty. Ask every female consumer and you will know that a considerable part of her personal budget is allocated to beauty treatments, and products. This is where skin clinics and salons become an essential part of festive fervour, so to know the dynamics of festive season in their sector we speak to Kaya Skin Clinic and know their plans.

Sharing the larger strategy Vijay Subramaniam, CEO, Kaya Ltd. says, “For the festive season, we have seen a lift in business in our skin-beauty services which falls under our everyday skin care/maintenance service bucket. Therefore, there will be greater impetus on the services and products bouquet which will be relevant to the season. Besides that, we’re also looking at e-commerce initiatives at Kaya to take a full swing by Nov/Dec 2013. We have plans to roll out our own e-commerce portal and drive sales of products through that channel. The launch of our online portal is well-timed to coincide with the festive season as products also play a very crucial role in the overall business during this season. This initiative will complement well with our aggressive digital marketing activities and will give further momentum in that direction.”

 What is brewing on the marketing front?

• “There’s at least 10% growth that we witness in a month like December over regular months like April/May. This year as well, we will be aiming at above 10% growth during festive season looking at the opportunities we have – launch of new exciting services, CRM-led activations and discounts collectively should yield positive results.” Indicates Arvind RP, Head Marketing, Kaya Ltd.

• Festive Promotions: Kaya has a whole bouquet of regular skincare services which become more relevant during the festive season. While a brand like Kaya sees increased number of footfalls before festive season for concern specific skincare solutions, their regular skin care service portfolio becomes more pertinent during festive season. Therefore, they design the promotions and communications around these services highlighting instant benefits of services.

• Innovation and new launches: Innovation is one of the key ingredients of Kaya’s customer-forward philosophy. They are looking at launching new services pertaining to the theme of the season. For instance, in December 2011 they had launched Gold Caviar Riche, a service that uses 23-carot gold mask and special caviar extracts to give instant glow, under their KSFT range of luxurious facials, which delighted their customers and reinforced the festive spirit by using gold in the service.

• CRM/Loyalty program-led initiative: Another key initiative which will be taken during festive season is the integration of CRM in the overall offering. The efforts will be towards creating special rewards in the loyalty program (called Kaya Smiles) to create attractive hooks for consumers to increase their frequency during the upcoming festive season.

“Our promotional and communication plan will include a mass media campaign where we focus on print & radio in key cities. Typically like last year, our campaign had a mix of print, radio and digital. We’ll be looking at 15% of the total marketing budgets being invested in digital to drive festive communication. We’ll also be looking at relevant services with offers for different regions which will help us in customizing our offerings with local flavours. Our CRM/loyalty program will also play a key role in communicating our festive offers. Typically we see 15% – 20% of our CRM base reacting positively to our promotions. We’ll be actively leveraging that during the festive months.” Highlights Arvind.

How is all this managed on an operational level?

“During our offer months, we ensure our customer experience is not compromised. We ensure that we increase the number of seats at the call centre to handle in-bound queries. Our training of the on-ground staff is also in sync with the offers that run during the offer months. We also ensure that our service levels are in line manage the peak during offer months.” Shares S. Subramanian, Head Operations, Kaya Ltd.

“Things are starting to look brighter with the end of season sale and now the upcoming festival season. The festive season should see an overall growth of 15-18% in the retail industry. Consumers will be in the mindset to shop but to get them to interact with your brand will be slightly more challenging, building extra pressure on retailers. However, the overall signs are positive for the industry to pick up momentum in the second half of the year.” Concludes Vijay.