Tuesday, December 23, 2008

Dabur Expanding Its Personal Care Biz - Dec 23, 2008

Few weeks back, Dabur India wanted to freeze its retail expansion plans for the next quarter, but interestingly they are now keen to expand once again this time with a totally reworked strategy. Dabur is reworking its plan to now focus on personal care segment instead of health and beauty retailing, to beat competition and leverage its brand strength at the same time.

Sources suggest that the new stores would be a lot smaller in size and they will be located in Bangalore and the NCR region. The focus will be more on private labels and international brands and tie ups with Turkish personal care brand ''Moda'' and an Australian cosmetics brand ''QVS'' is already in place.

The management for the retail operations have also seen a rejig. Earlier in the month, Dabur Retail''s expat CEO Peter Baker had quit and moved to Future Group. Till date there''s no replacement and Dabur''s in no hurry to find a replacement. Instead, Dabur India''s CEO Sunil Duggal will now be at the helm of affairs and regional heads will report directly to him as well as to Dabur''s board.

Dabur is known as an ayurvedic company and it wanted its retail stores to be away from this middle-segment image. But now, with Dabur''s management directly running the show, the challenge for Sunil Duggal will be to convince the Burman family who so far has been bearish on the venture.

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