Reynolds makes way for Rorito in pens

Prior to its marketing reveal earlier this month, Chennai-based GM Pens International, best-known as writing major Reynolds's former India licensee, was running teasers on television speaking of a mystery product.

It became apparent only around the second week of May that GM Pens, which marketed and distributed Reynolds in India for over two decades, was alluding to its own product Rorito.

This brand was actually launched by GM Pens earlier this year. But nationwide advertising and marketing for which the company is estimated to have spent around Rs 35-40 crore began only this month.

The new kid on the block has a familiar face backing it - Sachin Tendulkar. The cricket star was the brand ambassador of Reynolds for nine years having steered the fortunes of the brand adroitly during this period.

For starters, Reynolds, a preferred choice among adults, had no foothold in the kids segment a decade ago. It was GM Pens, its India licensee which signed up Tendulkar in 2006, tapping into the latter's huge fan following with children. The rest as they say is history.

Using a combination of advertising, marketing and promotions, Reynolds today has managed to endear itself to kids besides adults, which remains its core franchise. It is estimated to have a market share of around 18 per cent in the Rs 3,500-crore organised pen market in India.

Recreating the magic
GM Pens hopes to repeat the magic with Rorito. But there is a larger gameplan here. Rorito will be positioned not only as a player in the writing instruments space, but will also be used by its owner to ride the stationery wave, dominated by the likes of ITC's Classmate.

Experts pin this down to growing ambitions, something company executives do not deny.

Indrakumar Mahendran, joint managing director, GM Pens, says the company was keen to emerge as a global player and hence it was imperative to strike out on its own and look at areas beyond writing instruments.

"To spread our wings there was nothing like having our own brand," said Mahendran. "The arrangement with Reynolds had some restrictions and we did not want to limit ourselves to India and a few markets in the region," he said.

Riding the stationery market, however, is not the same as being in pens alone. The former consists of multiple categories and multiple brands. Besides local players, international brands including those from Japan (such as Kokuyo) and China, US and Europe have made their way into India as children here increasingly make it to school.

Industry estimates peg the size of the domestic stationery market at Rs 8,000 crore, growing at the rate of around 4-5 per cent per annum (some experts say it is higher at 10 per cent). Key constituents include notebooks, colour and art materials, besides pens, pencils, erasers, sharpeners and geometry boxes.

Like rival ITC, which has a portfolio of offerings under Classmate, GM Pens has 130 stock-keeping units under Rorito, with pens being the key driver. But the mix is expected to change as the focus on allied stationery products grows in the coming months.

"The main objective when we launched Rorito (in January 2016) was to match Reynolds volumes. We have done that. Our endeavour would be to achieve this success in other categories," Mahendran says.

GM Pens plans to scale up its manufacturing capacity to 3.8 million units per day in the next 18 months from the current level of 3 million units per day.

It is eyeing a turnover of Rs 500 crore from the domestic market this year. GM Pens also plans to enter West Asia and Africa in the near future.

GM Pens is also re-branding its 35 retail outlets in the country as Writesite Rorito from Writesite. "In Writesite we had restrictions in having only Reynolds branded pens. Writesite Rorito will have other premium pens as well such as Waterman and Sheaffer," Mahendran adds.

FROM REYNOLDS TO RORITO: GM PENS'JOURNEY SO FAR

• 1995: GM Pens became the India licensee of global writing major Reynolds    
• 1995-2005: Targeted largely at adults; remains core franchise    
• 2006: Was a turning point when the company signed up Sachin Tendulkar as brand ambassador; objective was to target children    
• 2006-2015: Reynolds became popular with kids; research showed that children wanted the "Pen that Sachin has"    
•  2016: Went solo; launched own brand Rorito