Baskin Robbins looks at retailing to kids through kids'' movies

Mumbai: Baskin Robbins, the premium ice-cream retailer is seeking B2B associations with international and domestic children''s films, aiming to benefit from co-branding.

The quest comes from having tasted some degree of success with co-branding initiatives with Hollywood blockbuster Spiderman 3 and Coca-Cola earlier in the year.

According to the company, targeting kids via its association with the Spiderman movie, Baskin Robbins saw increased footfalls at its retail spots, which powered their business to four times the monthly average in that particular month.

Below the line, the ice-cream chain also gave away free comics with each scoop of its ice cream, and also used the Spiderman brand in television commercials on kids'' channels.

The company is reported to have been in talks with the producers of the Bollywood movie Hanuman, but the film''s delayed release has proved to be a dampener to its plans.

Baskin Robbins retails through 240 outlets across 52 Indian cities, and plans to increase this count to around 300 outlets by December, following which it has set itself a target of rolling out 100 outlets each year. Baskin Robbins is looking at a cluster presence across many cities, with special focus on tier-II and III cities on account of latent business opportunities in smaller towns. Exemplifying its small town experience, the company claims that its store at Shillong does greater business than its store in Juhu, Mumbai.

The chain claims that its standalone stores are more profitable than the kiosks it has in many malls, though the kiosks rank higher in terms of footfalls. It attributes this differentiation to mall purchases being a manifestation of impulse buying, while in-store purchases is more deliberate or destination oriented.

Since Indians prefer fruit and nut flavours, the company is planning regular research and development programmes to customise its offerings. Global per capita consumption of ice-creams is at about one litre per year, while Indians seem to have a miniscule per capita consumption of 150ml a year.

Experimenting with a variation in its retail format, Baskin Robbins recently launched a lounge format for its outlet in Bangalore, and six in Hyderabad. A lounge outlet required a higher investment of Rs25-30 lakh, where as a standalone store needs about Rs12 lakh, and a kiosk can be set up for about Rs7 lakh. Baskin Robbins saw a turnover of Rs42 crore in the previous fiscal, and is estimating it to grow to Rs50 crore in the current fiscal.