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Archies charts revamp 

Mini K Joseph  
Bangalore: Archies Greetings & Gifts (AG&G) has embarked on a `consolidation and restructuring' exercise to capture a larger major share in the greeting cards and gifts market, according to the company's chairman & managing director Anil Moolchandani.

Mr Moolchandani told The Financial Express that the revamp would include setting up the company's own offices across the country. Currently, AG&G had offices in seven states and in three years, it would have offices in all states, he said.

He said the company was also targeting a revenue mix of 50:50 from gifts and paper products in five years. AG&G would also concentrate on online marketing, he said. "Through online marketing initiatives we are trying to create a market which never existed," Mr Moolchandani said.

To this end, the company is in talks with various firms that would represent AG&G's gifts channel on their sites. ``We are in talks with five companies for site integration and the process is expected to be completed by January,'' he said.

Mr Moolchandani said, AG&G was in the process of setting up its ERP and networking infrastructure in place. The system was expected to be operational by March next year. "With ERP in place, all our offices, outlets and distributors will be connected together,'' he said.

After Yahoo.com, the company recently had tied up with Mantraonline to sell cards online, he said.

He said AG&G would pump in Rs 6 crore towards e-commerce promotional activities both in India and abroad. In the overseas the company would focus on the US, Middle East, Sri Lanka, Malaysia, Singapore, Canada and UK.During the last fiscal, the company has posted a turnover of Rs 72 crore and this year it was targeting a 15 per cent growth, he said During calendar 2000, the company manufactured 80 million cards at its Delhi factory of which cards worth Rs 3.4 crore were exported to South Africa, Sri Lanka, Bangladesh and UAE.

``In these regions, we are mostly targeting the population of Indian origin,'' he said. The company already has franchise stores and distributors in these countries. The company outsources gifts from over 80 different suppliers across India.

Copyright © 2000 Indian Express Newspapers (Bombay) Ltd.

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