Paint On Tap

As the shade-card game has come to stay, paint companies are looking at new modes to meet customer demands. So Jenson & Nicholsons Instacolor was launched late last year in collaboration with Tikkurila OY of Finland. Instacolor began with 626 shades but today, Jenson & Nicholson offers 2,000 shades on tap at its select outlets.

Any shade desired by a customer is arrived at by mixing a base colour with appropriate strainers in an automatic machine. These tinting machines, which cost around Rs 8 lakh, are installed at dealer outlets and enable the consumer to choose between any of several hundred shades. The paint itself is then generated by mixing dyes with the base paint. The entire process takes just seven minutes.

 

Jenson & Nicholson has already installed over 130 Instacolor machines. Now, others have joined the bandwagon. Berger Paints India Ltd has launched its 1000-shade Colour Bank. This has been developed in collaboration with Ital Tinto of Italy.

ICI has gone one step further by introducing Colour Solutions, an Australian system. The computer system can show how a room will look when painted in the shade the customer has chosen. In effect, the computer screen provides the customer a master palette containing 500 shades, where each card contains the colour of the wall and the matching enamel for doors and windows.

Such machines will now help dealers to reduce inventories. Managing inventories, in fact, is a real chore for paints dealers as stocking a large number of shades at each distribution centre causes innumerable problems. But with the machines generating shades instantly, dealers only need to stock the base material. This will considerably ease the inventory requirements at the dealer end, says Ashit Kothari, vice-president of the equity research firm, InvesTrust Research.

But if customers are pleased about getting shades on tap, the industrys response has not been very positive. Thats why ICI has hardly advertised its Colour Solutions.

According to Prakash Doshi, partner, Bharat Hardware Stores, a paints wholesaler at C P Tank, where the paints market in Mumbai is located, Let alone these machines, even the 150 and 301 shade cards are pure advertisement gimmicks because only around 30-odd shades sell usually.

Moreover, against a total 15,000 retailers, the number of tinting machines likely to be installed can grow by only a hundred a year at the most for each manufacturer. So the machines are not expected to make a major dent in the market. According to a market survey conducted by Goodlass Nerolac, the existing level of consumer awareness also shows that the market is not yet ready for such innovations.

An ORG-Marg report reveals that only 20 per cent of the customers that visit paints shops with tinting machines are aware of the facility offered by these machines. And only one per cent of them have walked into the showroom because of the machine. Thats not a favourable portent for companies investing huge sums into the machines. No wonder G Dhananjayan, general manager, marketing, Goodlass Nerolac Paints, says, Novelty for the sake of it does not appeal to us if it does not bring in substantial business. But if the market responds to it positively, then we will not be averse to it

Economics is also the reason why Asian Paints has limited its tinting machines to sales depots. Says Bharat Puri, general manager, marketing, We have been using tinting machines with indigenous colourants for the last ten years. But we have not introduced them at the dealer level because it is not economically viable.

Apart from the high costs of the machine itself, the additional requirements of space, air-conditioning and of other infrastructure related to the installation, is slowing down dealer acceptance. And when it comes to the crunch, is the customer willing to pay a premium for using facilities like Instacolor and Colour Solutions? That too remains highly debatable.