Dollar Industries scouts for creative agency for lifestyle category

Lowe Lintas will continue to handle the hosiery category. The pitch process is underway in Kolkata.

Dollar Industries, a major hosiery manufacturing company, is on the lookout for a creative agency for its lifestyle brand. The company, which intends to launch its lifestyle brand pan India, is already in talks with a few agencies and is keen to close the deal by early next month. The pitch process is underway in Kolkata.

Meanwhile, Lowe Lintas, which handles Dollar Bigboss, the premium men's innerwear range, will continue to handle the hosiery category.

Besides Dollar Bigboss, the other sub brands in the company's portfolio include Force Go Wear, Club, Myme, Hutch, Midas, Lehar, Comfort, Interlock, Missy, Kids Care, Winter Care and Footprints (socks).

Confirming the news, Bidyut Nath, head, marketing communications, Dollar Industries, says they are looking for a mid-size agency, which can grow and develop in tandem with the company. The company intends to unveil the women's lifestyle range as well with its all India launch. As a result, the agency's mandate will be to design a strategy and come out with a complete creative campaign that not only helps in creating an image makeover but also makes the brand's lifestyle offerings desirable to the target group that buys its hosiery products.

The lifestyle brand, which is currently called Force Go Wear and caters only to men, will undergo a name change as it will now include a women's range as well.

"Unlike other brands, we are a hosiery company, which is uplifting to a lifestyle brand. The target group who buys our hosiery products might not be inclined to buy the same brand's lifestyle products. Hence, the agency will have to strategically think of a communication campaign to tackle this," Nath says. He adds that the company's hosiery products are well established in the market.

Interestingly, Dollar Industries carried out a soft launch of its lifestyle product offerings comprising jeans, T-shirts, bermudas, capris and track pants under brand Force Go Wear in 2010. The brand was launched in the East, some parts of Uttar Pradesh, Madhya Pradesh, Chattisgarh and South India. However, the company now wants to expand its lifestyle section by including a women's range, which includes jeans, track pants and camisoles.

Nath states that the company plans to come out with a full-fledged campaign about its lifestyle products, with a television commercial on the anvil. "After all, the end goal is to make people aware that Dollar Industries has moved from hosiery to the lifestyle category. And, this can only be established with a television commercial," Nath explains.

He adds that while the initial advertising will promote men's wear, it will slowly become end-to-end advertising for the entire category.

Dollar Industries was set up in 1996 by its chairman, Dindayal Gupta. The company has been developing at a good pace and claims to have clocked a turnover of Rs 575 crore in 2012-13 (from Rs 455 crore in 2011-12). Dollar Industries has four production units in Kolkata, Tirupur, Ludhiana and Delhi.

Around 60 per cent of the company's revenues are from its men's premium innerwear brand, Dollar Bigboss (which has actor Akshay Kumar as its brand ambassador), with about 5 to 10 per cent coming from lifestyle products, about 9 per cent from exports (its big markets are the Middle East, south Asia and Africa) and the rest from other sub brands including women and children's hosiery products. The company spends around 60 per cent of its marketing budget on advertising.

Dollar Bigboss's latest campaign featuring Akshay Kumar and Prabhu Deva was launched earlier this year. The brand was earlier endorsed by Salman Khan.