In the cost-sensitive spinning business where most products are generic, the last thing that any company would ask for is to create a brand. RSWM, the flagship company of $1 billion LNJ Bhilwara Group did precisely that. Giving a deaf ear to experts advising caution the company launched yarn brands with the conviction that the consumer needed change. The result was that the company launched its first yarn brand in 2011, one of the first instances of branding within the country’s yarn sector.

Following the commissioning of its state-of-the-art SJ-11 unit, the company launched the Ultima brand of grey yarn. The sales of Ultima increased to 11 per cent in 2015-16. Then, encouraged by the success, the company launched Edge, its niche value-added brand of superior yarn products in 2015. The brand immediately addressed an unmet customer need. Revenues from Edge accounted for 12 per cent of the company’s sales volume in 2015-16.

The grey yarn that was earlier priced as a commodity, now fetches a reasonable premium over competing variants, moves faster off shelves and has enhanced the company’s corporate brand. Revenues from branded products increased from 8 per cent in 2014-15 to 13 per cent in 2015-16.

The next step was to customize and manufacture yarn as per customer specifications and requirement. The company’s ‘3/7/25’ counter-response was fundamentally simple, three days for lab prototyping, seven days for trial sampling and 25 days for bulk manufacturing.

The company created product development centres within its manufacturing locations. It invested Rs 134 crores in enhancing its capabilities and allocated dedicated infrastructure and resources for timely product development and monitored the progress of each customer request on a real-time basis. The result is that even as the broad yarn market continued to be challenging.