Know which luxury brands are prepping a comeback in India

After failing to make a mark in their first attempt, several international luxury brands are planning to make a comeback with better strategies and new partners in India.

Carmaker Maserati and lingerie label La Perla will soon re-launch their new products in India as per market demands. While Maserati and La Perla have tied up with new partners this time, Italian superbike maker Ducati has set up a subsidiary, reported the Economic Times.

It is also being reported that British luxury menswear and accessories brand Alfred Dunhill is making a comeback strategy. In 2012, the company had brought the shutters down on its stores in India.

Further, Versace, Italian fashion house has paired up with a new partner instead of Infinite Luxury just two years after tying up with designer Manav Gangwani's firm.

These brands will tweak their product, pricing and distribution strategies to suit the local market and set realistic goals in a nascent market that lacks good infrastructure for luxury marketing. And they all know the importance of a good local partner.

"The local partner failed to offer after sales services. We had to fly our technicians from Italy to handle individual customer issues," said Umberto Cini, managing director for Middle East, India and Africa markets at Maserati, which had troubled first stint in the country in 2008 when it barely sold 20 cars in two years.

The Italian carmaker has now made a comeback with three distributors.

La Perla would re-enter the Indian market with a new partner — Vikas Jain, co-founder of phone maker Micromax, who believes that to succeed in India an international brand must craft a business model that takes into account uniqueness of the local market.

"Most brands currently work on a master franchise model in India. Rules of the game have to change if one has to make serious money here," he said. "My plan is not to open a couple of stores, invest a few crores and make a few lakhs of profit. There is to be strategic level of investments and more serious commitment from both parties for a long term," Jain said.

The luxury lingerie brand first entered India in 2006 through an exclusive franchise partnership with the Murjani Group, one of the early entrants in the luxury trade in the country. But the partnership fell through.

According to experts, many luxury brands got carried away in their first stint considering the growing number of affluent consumers and set unrealistic targets. "India's luxury market is very shallow at the moment and brands cannot expect to play the volume game right now," said Santosh Desai, a brand consultant and social commentator.

Ducati, which had a tough ride with local importer Precision Motors, has set up a wholly owned Indian subsidiary, Ducati India, to have a better control in the market and appoint dealerships directly. It's not looking to scale up too fast. "We have not come to India to make volumes, but to build the brand. We are expanding dealership network to new cities like Bangalore and Pune this year," said Pierfrancesco Scalzo, general manager for sales and marketing at Ducati Asia.

(Image: Indiatimes)