Rang Rage: Hand-Painted Lifestyle

GROUP CASE ASSIGNMENT

SUBMITTED BY: GROUP A
Aashni Chandran 1811076
Gunjesh Kumar 1811413
Nirmal M 1811110
Sairam Naik 1811024
Introduction
The Case demonstrates the journey of “Rang Rage,” a family start-up (co-founded by Neeti Jain and
Gagan Jain), that sells art-based products hand-painted by artists in small towns for customers. The
case shows a divide between the supply and demand of such products and how the company aims to
fill the gap between them. The company hires good artists through referrals, workshops & campaigns
and trains them to produce quality products with high consistency. The company pays them the right
amount to make this a practical activity for them. The company has faced multiple challenges across
the timeline starting with ensuring availability of enough buyers and painters, quality assurance, cost
cutting in procuring raw materials & vendors, not outsourcing non-core tasks and developing most
things inhouse.
The founders decided to bootstrap their start-up and didn’t opt for other available funding options.
Being the first in the market, they learnt most of the activities by doing and failing first.

Product-Market Decisions and Recommendations

1. Deregistering as an NGO and registering as a MSME
Registered as Rang Rage Art Foundation, the organisation worked towards the social cause of
providing a source of income to painters who were giving up initially. However, bad reputations
associated to most NGOs led to rang rage deregistering as an NGO and finally registering as a
MSME. Having registered as a MSME helped them to avail government benefits and schemes.

2. Identification of right technique to paint on fabric

Having no expertise and previous experience in field of painting on apparels, Rang Rage faced
major quality issues initially with a huge chunk of rejections. Since the concept was also new,
there wasn’t any availability of method of painting in public domain. It took them 6 months,
when a painter from Jaipur figured out the correct way.
Recommendation:
It took them 6 months of time to figure out the technique because they only had access to local
painters from Jaipur and Indore. Instead, they should have listed their problem on
crowdsourcing websites like freelancer.com or kickstarter.com to get access to global audience
which could have solved the problem in lesser duration. Both these platforms came in
existence in 2009 and by 2012 when rang rage started, they had enough traction.

3. Expansion of production centre in Jaipur

Faced with shortage of painters in Indore, the founders decided to expand and open a 2 nd
production centre in Jaipur where they could utilise Neeti’s father’s office space as well. They
assigned the student painter to coordinate the production. However, due to lack of standard
procedures and non-availability of founding members in Jaipur, the decision soon turned out
bad with delays in delivery and quality issues with products.
Recommendation:
Instead of expanding in Jaipur with founders based in Indore, the founder couple could have
explored the option of shifting the base to Jaipur itself. Since it was early days of operation and
Indore had lack of painters anyways, expansion in Jaipur only made sense if the base of
operation was shifter there.

4. Logo for the brand

They made multiple iteration to their logo by first bootstrapping it from a cousin, then hiring
an advertising professional whose logo they copyrighted and later realised that a portion of
the logo was a free vector available in public domain. This forced them to change the logo again
and they even lost the money paid to the professional.
 Recommendation:
They could have made a legal agreement with the advertising professional, given they were
willing to copyright the logo. This would have ensured that the hired professional would not
have used the free vector and would have created a unique logo. This would have saved both
their time and money.

5. Building a website
Rather than outsourcing the task, they tried to create the website and the photographs by the
inhouse team. Also, to ensure a full-fledged launch, they wanted enough product categories
for which they even sourced hand painted products from jodhpur and Kolkata.
Recommendation:
Instead of diversifying their product portfolio for a website launch, they should have targeted
offline stores first with a focused range of products and then expand to other categories as
demand increased and go for a website launch. This would have also eliminated the problem
of giving work to painters even in absence of any order and thus having a capital lock-in.

6. Supply Chain for offline stores

Given their most painters were housewives and scattered all over the Indore city, the founder
couples started door to door pickup from their painters which led to time loss and the duo had
to work late night to further inspect and pack the items picked up during the whole day.
Recommendation:
a) Since it’s nowhere mentioned about the lead time agreed upon between Rang Rage and
Ishana, we are assuming that it won’t be a Just in time agreement. Instead of travelling and
collecting products daily from painters, the founder couple could have optimised the routes
so as to collect from nearest painters frequently and from far off painters once inventory
is built at their place.
b) Another possibility is to split roles and while Gagan goes for pickups, Neeti can handle the
inspection and packaging at home.
c) They can hire a driver to do rounds for pickup. Since in the current case also their car is
occupied for pickup, hiring a driver will free up time for them.

7. Increasing traction on social media platforms

They started a promotion scheme where the buyer can win a gift after posting a picture with
the product on their Facebook page. However, this backfired as majority of buyers were
foreigners and they had to ship free gifts to international locations which added to their cost.
Recommendation:
Instead of a gift, the promotion could have been modified to give the buyer a discount coupon
for their next purchase from their online or offline store. This would have resulted in repeated
purchase as well.

8. Raw materials and vendor selection

Having no technical knowledge of the raw materials, they went ahead by buying the best
brands in each product category. Doing so, the product utility was compromised evident by
the less appealing loop and button I-pad cover. Further, they were denied bulk discounts by
most vendors due to smaller order quantity and thus were forced to pay higher amount.
Recommendation:
a) They should have gone through product reviews before selecting them for their line of
products. A product’s utility should have been their primary focus.
b) They could have gone into a long-term contract with the vendor proposing the vendor with
a higher volume order for a duration of a year instead of one-time orders. A clause of
 penalty to be paid by rang rage to vendor in case of not meeting that order volume could
be included as well. From Rang Rage’s end, they could have done an estimation of expected
yearly orders and based on the difference between the bulk order cost and small order
cost, the penalty could have been decided in a way that they are benefited even in case of
a default.
9. Recruitment of Painters and Designers
Initially, most of the painters Rang Rage had were hired on referral basis. The firm worked upon
developing better bond with them through initiatives like painter of the month, monthly
meetings, a tag on the product with description of the painter. Later they also booked
newspaper classifieds and conducted painting workshops in Manawar region.
With an aim of establishing themselves as a premium designer brand, Rang Rage went ahead
with search of designers. However, Indore not being a fashion-conscious city, they failed to
find the designers meeting their requirement. Later they hired two painters to do the designing
job. With their success, they decided to develop design capabilities in all their painters through
design workshops.

10. Packaging of products

Having a variety of products offerings required different packaging and given the smaller order
quantity, they couldn’t get a third-party vendor for packaging and finally adopted the Dharavi
model for packaging their products where they involved multiple households to pack small
order quantities.

11. Pricing the products

With no other similar products in market to benchmark, pricing their products was a major
challenge to ensure enough payments to the painters and a margin for themselves.
They decided to charge a 20% premium for quality and 20% additional for the painting. Also,
they revamped product design to reduce the time of painting to 1-2 hours. Going ahead, they
removed low margin products like fridge magnets to focus mostly on the higher price products.

12. Creating a customer experience

They focused both on website experience and product delivery experience. They hired
professional photographer and revamped the initial website. They even hired an agency for
managing social media platforms along with collaborations with the top fashion bloggers. Every
customer was called to seek feedback of the product after purchase.
Recommendation:
To build a trust among the customers, they could have given warranties on the product.
Descriptions on product tags like colour fade resistance could have been included which would
build a trust in the product and would enhance after sales experience.

Future scope for higher growth and profitability

The major challenges we would be addressing in order to increase future sales and profitability of rang
rage are (a) Customers willing to pay premium for hand painted products (b) To identify products and
product categories which would appeal to the customers (c) To manage cost of recruiting artists and
retaining them in business even with fluctuating demands and cost of merchandising the art based
product.
Recommendations:
1. Own Retail chain:
Rang rage tied up with Ishana, in Delhi airport to generate enough demand and in later stages,
it started business with The Lotus House, high end store which is located in all four metro cities.
There might be less visibility for rang rage as a brand, and sales of rang rage product will be
 affected by the other brands present in the stores. Rang rage can start its own retail stores in
airports and shopping malls.
Challenges:
Scaling of products and product categories for all retail stores will be difficult. Also, opening a
new store will cannibalize its own products in other retail stores like the lotus house or Ishana
and would be require cutting ties with these existing businesses.

2. Customized products:
Rang rage provides unique products to its customers already. They could also introduce a
category of customized products on their website, where they can paint on the products
according to the customer’s description (like a photo or new design). This would be a
completely premium segment which has high potential for gifts and souvenirs.
Challenges:
It is limited to only online services, as it is time consuming. Artists also need to be trained and
paid extra if portraits or calligraphy skills are required apart from their drawing skills.

3. Inflight advertisements:
To increase brand awareness and to increase sales, rang rage should invest more in the
marketing of the products and brand. In order to attract offline customers, they can use
advertisements in the inflight magazines. These airline magazines generally provide articles on
the destination, which also includes ads about the brands available in airport stores.
Challenges:
Getting a slot in the magazines will be costly.

4. Third Party sellers:

Rang rage with its unique value proposition, can sell on other e-commerce platforms in order
to get visibility and sales.
Challenges:
E-commerce is a price competitive platform. So, increasing sales will be difficult with their
premium positioning.

5. Stores in international destinations:

They initially started this business in Muscat and identified a market for this unique and simple
business. The major problem faced was unavailability of artists. Considering they have
established a great network of artists and strong and loyal connection with them, they can
start exporting to stores at several international destinations.
Challenges:
The shipping cost would be an additional cost if we are not exporting in large quantity. Hence,
they need to establish contracts with these international retail outlets.

6. B2B sales:
They need to establish connections with corporates or private businesses in order to have
constant demand and sales. They can have collaborations with coffee giants like cafe coffee
day or starbucks for their mugs, and restaurant chains for other cutleries and interiors decors.
Challenges:
Convincing these corporate and private business.
Catering to the huge quantity requirement apart from their regular orders, as all products are
hand painted.