India has been largely dominated by unorganised sector players in Plywood, furniture, decorative surface industry and trade. After demonetization and GST, The market seems to be tilting and started shifting a little towards organise brands and policy driven companies. What looked as a distant change is now happening at speed as dealers are looking towards brands that have obtained some pull sales to remain immune from slowdown. The situation arose by Covid 19 has accelerated the reach and acceptance of branded products in plywood and decorative segment among Specifiers and customers, thank to Covid era.
The organised brands started their manufacturing almost two months before the unorganised sector, because their HR policy brought the workers to plants quickly after ‘unlock 1.0 ’ happened. The organised companies also received their payments faster than Unorganised sector because their transactions were preferably happening online and digitally, that enabled people to receive materials without physical transaction of currencies. The organised brands are taking advantage of the opportunity and vacuum created by Covid and thus launching economical range product and re planning their entire sales network to rural and some urban areas.
On one side when unorganised sector was trying to cut expenses, the organised brands started spending on advertising and promotion and expanded their dealer network and stock footprints’ as the Ply reporter team find it happening in entire North Indian states including UP, Bihar, MP, Rajasthan, Haryana, Punjab, and even Delhi-NCR. The Ply Reporter market survey clearly found that ‘Covid’ has given a long due opportunity to organise brands that has given them another 3 to 4% market share within one quarter. Although the reflection of this impact in numbers will be felt only after 8 to 9 months when the market will come back to normalcy and the numbers will become permanent.
According to market survey done by Ply Reporter research team, the acceptance of Greenply, Century ply, Greenpanel, Duro, Archid Ply and Austin Ply, is better compared to other names. Ecotech, Sainik plywood and other mid segment branded product range has expanded to tier 3 towns in rural areas during these times suggest reports. It is also visible that emerging brands like Wigwam ply, Trojan ply, Amulya ply etc has been performing better even after covid hit markets. The emerging calibrated plywood segment it’s also proving to be a boon for readymade furniture makers because the local production is helping them to reduce their dependency on Imported plywood from China.
The organised brands started their manufacturing almost two months before the unorganised sector, because their HR policy brought the workers to plants quickly after ‘unlock 1.0 ’ happened. The organised companies also received their payments faster than Unorganised sector because their transactions were preferably happening online and digitally, that enabled people to receive materials without physical transaction of currencies.
Those companies who have a complete set up of calibrated plywood equipped with marketing tools and sales team are gaining wider market acceptance due to increasing interest of OEM and furniture makers. Despite increasing demand of economical panel materials the mid-segment organised plywood brands are witnessing very fast recovery of sales almost nearing to pre covid levels of February and March. It is to be noted that North India and Kerala account for 75% of the plywood supply which comes under unorganised segment at large.