Bolo Clara Clara!

At Milagrow, we all go for a week’s vacation twice a year. The past week was the first one of this year. After a brief stay at Rishikesh, where we had gone for camping (but could not camp because of early rains), I headed to my home town of Bathinda. Bathinda would fall under Tier 3 category of towns, with a population of around 2 million. While high inflation, tanking stock markets, soaring commodity prices have put a question mark on India’s growth story in medium term, some interesting experiences made me realize that the modernization bug has bitten the smaller towns and cities of India. And it is here that the success of our growth story hinge upon.

Modernization being a relative term here means modernization in terms of better infrastructure and people looking for lifestyle which typically is considered up-market in the Indian context.

My first encounter happened when my parents came after my life for getting a hair cut, which I was not interested in because of sheer laziness and the fact that a pretty lady had complemented me on my hair style a week ago. To evade the pressure, I said that I would only go to stylish unisex saloon and not the usual hairdressers where most of the India goes for hair cuts.

‘Then why don’t you go to Clara?’ came the reply

‘What’s Clara?’ I asked with a baffled look

‘It’s a new saloon that has come up. Just a mile away from our house’, said my mom.

‘Oh! I sighed

With no options left to evade the impending haircut, I went to ‘Clara’ (I liked the name). As I parked my car outside ‘Clara’, I found a 300 sq feet shop with a façade made of some stylish glass. With some apprehension, I entered. It was a well lit fully air conditioned shop, with leather couches, full length mirrors and a decent infrastructure to qualify it as a ‘Modern Saloon’.

Upon asking for a haircut, I was told that I will have to get a hair wash first, and this would cost me Rs 50 extra. I obediently accepted. After the hair wash, I reclined on a comfortable leather couch and left it to the brown haired man with and his scissors. According to him, the entire staff had been trained at New Zealand (never knew the New Zealand had this kind of USP). Clearly his claims were false because of two reasons. First a 2 man team does not really qualify to be called ‘Entire Staff’. Secondly, the kind of customer handling I experienced at the reception, during the hair wash, shifting from hair wash section to the hair styling section, at the hair styling section was no where close to what it had been at some other places I have been to in Gurgaon. To a trained eye, modernization goes beyond infrastructure. It includes the way you talk and handle your customer and the orderliness you show with your infrastructure. But I don’t think at this stage this would define the success or failure of ‘Clara’, considering that the majority of audience of the town has never seen better than this.

My visit to ‘Clara’ sensitized me to the fact that the India’s modernization story has started taking roots in smaller town of India. For marketers, this is an important realization, since the majority of Indian consumer and wealth lies there. The consumer in these towns has tasted the blood through media, soap operas and reality shows. They are now ready to spend few extra bucks at the cost of their savings and be a part of the modernization wave. There is a tremendous potential to sell the basis services in a stylish packaging at the right price.

Upon returning home, my mom told me that the owner of Clara had set up a canopy at the city’s only club to promote to make them known to the cities’ upper audience. It was an intelligent choice of marketing because the communities in smaller towns are very closely knit. Word of mouth and referrals are the best is the best form of marketing in smaller towns. Further, ‘Clara’ has incentivised referrals through a scheme that if you bring some one along for the first time, you get a 50% discount for yourself.

As far as the haircut is concerned, I think it was a decent one. It still needs to be seen what the pretty lady has to say about it.