Innerwear Manufacturer

I: How do you plan to achieve this growth?

C: Growth strategies can be in the form of diversification, market penetration, market development and product development.

I: Which approach would you prefer and why?

C: Focus should be on coming up with new products in both existing and new markets. The reasons are-

Current product market is already at mature stage with not much scope for innovation

Current product market is price elastic

New products can be developed for different customer segments like kids and female. Client can possibly target female as scope of product innovation is higher which could lead to a differentiating factor for the company.

I: Current distributors don’t deal in women innerwear. Though the growth rate for female market (20-25%) is higher than male market (5-10%).

C: Then the focus should be on channel development while also assessing if current resources like machinery and manpower are capable of new product development or not. This is based on the fact that women innerwear will require more competency in terms of design to ensure product differentiation.

How competitive is the female market?

I: 20% branded, 80% local (divided across 50 local brands)

C: Then M&A is a possibility considering the huge chunk of market being occupied by local players. Local players can be acquired for their design capability and our brand can be leveraged to establish ourselves quickly in the market.

I: If M&A is not feasible, how would you train your current manpower for launching product line?

C: Design competency can be built over time in the current manpower by training or hiring can be done to fast track the growth.

I: What needs to be done if hiring externally is not possible?

C: A part of the current manpower can be trained for the new product development while the majority of the workforce continues to focus on the main product production.

I: How will you segment the customer segment. Also, how will the new product be positioned?

C : Customers can be segmented based on age. Design and material can be used accordingly. As the older customers will prefer comfortable material more than the design while younger segments will focus more on design. 

Product should be launched under a new brand preferably. As the current brand name has been only associated with men innerwear in the past and thus, female target segment might not be able to relate to the existing brand name.