This year´s Tihar season has been greeted by mixed views, with manufacturers seeing sales growth while retailers maintain that their business has slowed a bit. “Business has been good this year due to booming construction and housing business in the capital,” says Soumitra Roy, General Manager of Asian Paints Nepal Pvt Ltd. “The whole industry has seen a growth of at least 20 percent this year with the business worth Rs 2 billion, out of which Rs 1.1 billion is in the Kathmandu Valley alone,” he says. Roy says they record 25 percent of the whole year´s business in the two-month period during the Dashain-Tihar festival.
As a part of attracting customers, Asian Paints provides a lucky draw coupon on every purchase worth Rs 5,000, with prizes ranging from DVD players, mobiles phones and cameras to trips to Nagarkot and Pokhara. The winner of the lucky draw wins a trip for one to Dubai while the bumper prize is a trip for two to Dubai.
Paint retailers, however, haven´t shown the same optimism as manufacturers. Nandan Adhikari of Colour Spa in Old Baneshwar says that business has contracted. “It´s not that business is bad as we´re still doing well. But compared to the previous year, sales from my shop has gone down,” he says, putting the decline in business at around 30 to 40 percent. Adhikari blames the fall to the increasing number of retailers in the market and a general gloom in the economy.
“There are too many retailers in the market and larger showrooms like ours are selling at almost no margin and surviving on sales bonus from the manufacturers. People are also not spending much because of the present economic situation in the country,” he says, adding that a large number of retailers have also been pushing smaller retailers into adding low quality material to paint.
Adhikari says the jump that is usually seen during the festive season has not happened much this year as the rain has stayed longer. “Paint is a show off business and people are not willing to show off because of fear of being targeted for extortion,” he says. “At present, people are actually buying paints mostly to decorate their interiors.”
Another retailer Prajay Man Karmacharya of Sheetal Hardware in Thamel says that business has remained largely constant but with some seasonal rise. “I´ve worked here for nearly two decades. But I haven´t seen much rise in business this season. I think only shops around places with lots of old houses like New Road see a lot of rise during the season,” he says.
Schemes like Asian Paints´ and Lewis Bergers´ six week-long “a bike a week” prize also help sometimes, he says. Karmacharya also agrees with Adhikari that the high number of retailers has reduced business. “Too many sellers have affected our business that is already a business with a low profit margin.”
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