The Hindu Business Line : Aluminium Gallery for lifestyle products

The gallery offers high quality finished products, fabricated and manufactured by its customers who are called the franchisee. These franchisees take up the display and sale of exotic aluminium products across the country.

A VIEW OF the Aluminium Gallery.

New Delhi , June 8

For discerning consumers keen on investing in lifestyle products to lend a refreshingly elegant look to their ambience, aluminium is fast emerging as a real material substitute with household and office products being increasingly chosen in place of conventional wood or steel.

With globalisation and transmission of fashion catching up, domestic consumers, too, have plumped for aluminium as the preferred choice for home products such as windows, ladders, and outdoor furniture. The reasons are not far to fathom, as aluminium products are strong and light in weight and corrosion-free over a lifetime. Unfortunately, aluminium has seldom been sold in the way a consumer could appreciate its finer application or end-use as aluminium extrusions get stacked up in racks or displayed in bundles from which a customer has to purchase it or get it fabricated into a product like window, chair or ladder.

The consumer is, thus, handicapped on two counts — neither he could get the feel of the finished product nor see its features.

Gone are these constraints to the consumers as the Rs 35,000-crore Aditya Birla Group's flagship company Hindalco Industries Ltd has taken the unique initiative to spread the awareness of finished product quality. Hindalco's Chief Marketing Officer Shashi Maudgal told Business Line that his company opened the Aluminium Gallery at Mumbai a year ago as a display outlet under which it has started offering high quality finished products, fabricated and manufactured by its customers who are called the franchisee. Hindalco has got good feedback at its Mumbai Gallery with some nine to 10 franchisee intending to take up the display and sale of exotic aluminium products across the country, he added.

In its bid to popularise the growing use of aluminium, the company's initiative will get a shot in the arm when its first independent franchisee Abhiskek Aluminium Products Pvt Ld plans to launch the Aluminium Gallery on a commercial basis in Gurgaon (Haryana) on June 10, Maudgal said.

The franchisee would offer for sale aluminium products for homes/offices/interiors. Besides high quality aluminium products such as doors, grills, ladders, windows, the Gallery would feature Sun Louvres, Signages, Insect screens, modular office furniture and aluminium composite panel, Maudgal said. Hindalco's customers such as Hunter Douglas, Elesar Focchi, Alutech, and Alpphha Stack Chairs manufactured the products, which would be on display.

Stating that Hindalco and Jindal remain the key player in domestic aluminium extrusions, an industry spokesman said that with over 75-odd players, most of them in the unorganised sector, the extrusion industry is plagued by problems of poor material quality, imperfect workmanship and sub-standard accessories for the sake of churning out cheaper products for sale to the gullible consumers.

That is the reason why Hindalco has chosen to make the quality end products available at franchisee outlets across various owns, cities and metros in the country, Maudgal said, adding that the objective is to drive "new applications in the market".

He said that through the launch of Aluminium Gallery, more and more consumers would be able to take an informed decision on the products they intend to procure for enriching their environment that will be a virtual visual delight.

As the average per capita consumption of aluminium in the country is 0.70 kg against the developed countries such as the US and Japan's at over 25 kg, there is vast scope for making utility and lifestyle products of aluminium so that the consumer choice for material substitution gets widened and he/she would get the real value for the money spent, Maudgal remarked.

More Stories on : Interiors & Homes | Aluminium | Lifestyle

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