Charagh Din : CD Rocks

Brand : Charagh Din
Company: Charagh Din
Agency: Network Advertising

Brand Count : 129

Charagh Din Shirts otherwise popularly known as CD Shirts is a unique brand. CD shirts are known as the only One store readymade brand in India. The brand is available in its showroom in Mumbai and nowhere else. The CD showroom in Mumbai is considered as the largest shirt store in the world.

Charagh Din was originally New Lord & Co came into existence in 1947. Two years later this small tailoring company was bought over by the enterprising Mr Arjan Daswani which converted this shop into a wonderful brand. CD has grown from a 800 sqft shop to 100,000 sqft shop because of the owner's never ending passion for quality and marketing excellence.
The brand's fame began to spread from Mumbai to other parts of the country and CD began to figure in the shopping list of those who travel to Mumbai. I have friends who buys 10 shirts when they visit Mumbai and wears only CD shirts.
CD shirt was built on three basic qualities
a. Sophistication
b. Good Taste
c. Special Identity.
The brand was earlier known as the " Shirt that Fits". The word of mouth spread fast with the increasing list of Who is Who began wearing this brand. More over CD was the first branded party wear shirt in India. The brand never failed to experiment with design and it gave the brand a contemporary look even after 60 years of existence.

For every successful brand the challenge comes when the brand begins to expand. CD does not want its USP of one store brand to be diluted by opening multi-location stores. Hence the brand embraced the net to expand the volume. In 2001, the brand was available online. The owners feel that the net will take care of the reach while the brand could be built through the media.

Recently the company have started aggressive promotion for this brand. The baseline of the brand has been changed to " CD Rocks". The ad features Czech models partying in a typical party locale. The ad is poorly made and does not convey any tangible value of the brand. The aim of the campaign was to project CD as a party shirt to the target segment of urban youth . But the execution and the models was a flop ( my opinion).

*****

Dr Keller's Brand Report Card for Charagh Din

Delivering on Customer's Desires: Positive since the brand has been maintaining its quality and design excellence. The product is put through rigorous quality checks and the company makes sure that the new designs are launched every month.

Relevance: The brand still has relevance in today's market. There is still a need for a brand which is young and vibrant

Value: CD shirts are priced quite reasonably and this makes the deal more attractive

Positioning: The brand has made a change in its positioning which I think is a negative factor. The new campaign have failed to convey any values or strength of the brand.

Integrated Marketing Activities: The brand has not fully integrated its activities on the web. Since this brand has an online store, no aggressive online promotions are seen. I haven't yet received a single e-mail from the company promoting its range.

*****

Charagh Din is a brand that has immense potential. It has the heritage, quality, Share of Mind, brand equity and the uniqueness. But the company seems to have forgotten its strengths. The brand is wise to have retained its uniqueness of one store brand by using web as the alternative channel. But still it has not fully harnessed the power of web as a media for brand building.I hope that in the quest to capture the mind of the urban Yuppie, the brand does not dilute the equity that was built over time.

Source: Charaghdin.com