March 29, 2013: Swiss based brand watch Oris which has been test marketing its products for the last eight months in India will be officially launching their watches in August this year. The company which has a legacy of 104 years has sold 1,73,000 watches worldwide would be trying out their luck in the Indian luxury watch market which is estimated at Rs.4,700 crore. Oris would be targeting the age group of 30-55 in India and aims to sell 4,700 watches by the year end. They have already sold 1,500 pieces in India since their soft launch in July last year. The Oris brand of watches which is available between Rs.59,000 and Rs.2.8 lakh are sold in Indian through 16 points of sale.
The Swiss watch maker has plans to add another 24 points of sales in India this year and has created a corpus of Rs.16 crore for advertisement and marketing. For their expansion plans, company is scouting for a brand ambassador in India and they have plans to start two exclusive boutiques as well by the year end. Oris has started looking for new markets after the economic slowdown in US and Europe started affecting the growth of the firm.
Though the company has set up a subsidiary in India to expand its base in India there are no immediate plans to set up a manufacturing base here. The company would be paying an import duty of 47 per cent and bringing the watches from outside India. As the company plans aggressively for India one of the major challenges that they are going to face is imitations. This is one of the reasons of Oris going for a subsidiary in India rather than going for a Joint Venture. But the company thinks that they can ward off this threat since it would be difficult for other watch makers to imitate the design of Oris since the body of the watches are made of titanium.
