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Chandon Releases Fashionista Manish Malhotra designer Labels

Posted: Tuesday, 19 September 2017 17:47

 

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Chandon Releases Fashionista Manish Malhotra designer Labels

September 19: Known for its innovative marketing strategies including introduction of special variants like 'Délice' and Summer Editions, Chandon has stepped up its promotion of the classic Brut and Rose Brut by roping in master couturier Manish Malhotra to design bottle labels with interesting motifs, a concept pioneered by Rajeev Samant, founder CEO of Sula to launch Tropicale Brut in 2015 and carried forward for the Diwali and Holi limited editions for Sula Brut, writes Subhash Arora

Not only has the sparkling wine market in India been growing at a faster pace since the arrival of Chandon in 2013, it has added colours and fashion to the bottle labels in order to attract consumers with Chandon introducing couple of new bottle labels designed by the fashion designer, Manish Malhotra who is known for designing clothes for Bollywood stars and celebrities and brings further sparkle to this segment. The labels will be available in the market in the first week of October, before Diwali at Rs. 1450 each. But these are part of a festive edition and not only targeted only for Diwali.

‘I have created two distinct designs on the bottles. While one is luxurious gold motifs over a midnight sky background reminiscent of the night sky during Diwali and depicts the prints on a sherwani, the other celebrates the sari with a spritz of pink and rose gold-stemmed floral draping the bottle. In keeping with Chandon’s French legacy, my prime inspiration was the gardens at the Palace of Versailles. This was further filtered in the context of Indian celebrations,’ says the master couturier.

Stéphane de Meurville, the relatively new MD of Moet Hennessy India says, “We all know about India’s vibrant festivities, celebrations at Diwali and weddings and of course Bollywood films. Manish beautifully stitches these together for Chandon.” His sentiments are echoed by Sophia Sinha, Senior Marketing Manager who says, “For us it is the coming together of two like-minded brands which represent an evolving India that speaks of an international lifestyle, yet tied into Indian tradition just like these two limited edition bottles.”

Manish Malhotra adds, ‘I truly believe that fashion, food and drink are significant indicators of a culture. In India, the coming together of both is an essential part of our festivals, weddings and other celebrations. So, when Chandon reached out to me to create these bottles, I was excited to work with a new canvas.’

Following Sula’s footsteps

The credit for interesting motifs on sparkling wine bottles really goes to the industry leader Sula and especially the founder CEO Rajeev Samant who had been astutely watching the entry of Chandon and the increasing competition and introduced the first bottle with colourful motifs of small paisley in 2015 when Sula introduced the new label Sula Tropicale Brut with full fanfare in Mumbai.

Giving an insight to the genesis, Rajeev says, ‘I suddenly realised we had a great in-house designer team and a great procurement team so why not delight our consumers with interesting designs on the bottle.’ My only brief to the team was to come out with designs using Paisley and lots of celebratory Indian colours.’ The design team in Mumbai, headed by Sunil Deshpande came out with a few designs within a week. Making a few alterations like reducing the size of the Paisley, we were ready with the Tropicale and the Diwali season. This was a huge success and received very well by our consumers and helped us increase sales even beyond our imagination.

Carrying forward with the idea for Holi, I sat with Sunil and his team again and this time told them to add more vibrant colours representative of Holi. Again, it was a tremendous success. When we came out with the limited edition of Blanc de Blanc Brut (Chardonnay) last year, I had black and gold in mind because of the richness and elegance that the design and the liquid inside the bottle signified. We have a very limited quantity but the customers and we find the bottle very impressive.’

‘We have our own equipment for ‘sleeving’. That makes it easier and quicker for us to incorporate the design change on the bottle’, says Rajeev adding,’ a small point in favour of changing sleeves in our favour in Maharashtra is that this does not constitute a label change and thus enables us to make a change as and when we want it’ He stress though that they would restrict the change to one or two labels a year only. Currently Tropicale Brut and Classic Brute are available in the colourful designs; the classic label has also not been discarded as many conventional markets are happier with it.

Grover Zampa Vineyards (GZV)

Sparkling wine category is an exciting segment for the 25-year old Grover Zampa Vineyards. Soiree Brut and Brut Rose' sparkling wines are produced at their Nashik winery but Bangalore winery has also starting producing bubblies in 2016-17 to meet demand.

They added last year, Magnifique Soiree Brut and Brut Rose' to the portfolio. This bottle has black colour sleeve with attractive multi-colour floral designs and motifs wrapped seamlessly around the bottle. According to Sumedh Singh Mandla, CEO of GVZ their sales in this segment jumped 59 % during last fiscal year; they are eyeing over 30% growth in the current fiscal year.

GZV plans to release a new sparkling wine named Auriga-designed to target groups for special occasions including wedding segment during its celebratory year. The innovative packaging will be revealed by GVZ when fully conceptualized but will appeal to a larger Indian and international audience, according to Mandla.

Kapil Sekhri, Director of Fratelli Winery says they have no plans to introduce such labels. York Winery whose facilities were used by Chandon in the initial couple of vintages and which then started producing sparkling wines too, recently introducing Rose Brut, has classic labels (the Rose label is in fact very elegant). Says Kailash Gurnani, the winemaker and partner of York, ‘As of now we do not have any plans to introduce designer or festive bottles. Our focus lies on making a consistent product year on year. We have spent a fair amount of time in coming up with a premium looking bottle with a timeless design. People have responded well to it and our sparkling wine is growing in sales. For the time being we do not feel the need to change anything.’

From all accounts it appears the Sparkling wine segment is booming, fuelled by Chandon which had declared at the Launch 4 years ago that it would be their endeavour to expand the market rather than eat into the existing market. With their competitiors taking a note of the changed scenario and the furious competition, the market for high quality wines with second fermentation in the bottle (Méthode Traditionelle) may be flirting with the 100,000-case mark by the year end or during the next year.

And Manish Malhotra and Chandon may take a bow for contributing to the growth of this segment.

Subhash Arora

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