Impossible to be impeccably dressed all the time? No problem, Whizz will take care. It was a brand of formal office shirts that had entered the Indian market a decade ago. A century-old American brand, it was licenced to Rann Readymades, a subsidiary of a textile manufacturer that had set up India's first ISO 9002 plant for shirts.

The shirt brand had entered India as an American brand, complete with readymade heritage: how its collars set the standard for sophistication, tales of marriage proposals received by the imaginary Whizz Man, how the shirt entered the White House wardrobe... all very Boston snobset-ish, all very impressive.

And Whizz had come, as most American brands do, with strict guidelines on its character and behaviour in this "new market" (to Whizz). It had come with clear non-negotiable global norms on formal attire. Priced at the very top of the scale, the brand was aimed sharply, one-eye-shut, at the globe-trotting Indian business perfectionist.

"Phew," said Vijay Nath, chief of Rann Readymades, "it's been quite a decade, hasn't it?"

Rajesh Rastogi, head of business, Whizz, did not respond. He just flung a dossier onto Nath's desk like a frisbee. "Hear that?" he muttered, "I heard it whizz."

"It's all fact," said Nath, "all fact."

"Yes, I know. I've got it all in my head. I've been on this brand for 10 years. Up the crest, down the trough. The rise, the fall. And now the rise again."

"Yes, but still, these sales details-showroom by showroom-tell quite a vivid story of what went wrong in that 1998-99 and later phase, when excise kicked in and we fell into the discount trap trying to beat the market recession. You'll be surprised by the shift in the base of Whizz wearers. Good that we've refocused our retail strategy now."

Whizz had started with India's swankiest shirt showrooms on the mall streets of Indian metros, but the discount phase had severely injured their prestige. In the past two years, however, Rann had returned to its premium underpinnings. The shops frequented by bargain-hunters had been closed, new fancier ones opened, and the in-store merchandising contemporised to suit new techniques such as 'colour blocking'.

Indeed, colourful shirts had been added on, as part of the semi-casual Spellbound collection, launched to give Whizz complete domination of the perfectionist male's wardrobe. In fact, the entire product portfolio had been recrafted, of late.

The limited series Dali collection, sold only for a couple of months and that too with elaborate sleeve-tag literature, had been a total sell-out. For all-season hotsellers, a series of technical breakthroughs had done the trick. Whizz had wowed the discerning consumer with its Rs 1,750 'stainfree' shirts, for example, launched barely a year ago. "The USP," as Rastogi put it, "is that the very fabric is a nano-tech marvel, differentiated upstream with molecular fusion at the fibre stage. The cotton retains its breathability and natural hand-feel. Our competitors might claim to match the innovation, but what they're really selling is a shirt made of artificially coated fabric-a raincoat." On the comfort parameter, Whizz had scored another success-in niche terms-with the unveiling of its Flex collection, with its Lycra-fitting appeal to the fitness-driven yuppie, the energetic busybody who valued freedom of movement but not at the cost of being forced to conceal his torso.

In all, 2002-03 had marked a revival. "The sales trend is heartening," said Nath, "but Rajesh, we're a little short on time here. I want the angle of the graph's incline to be steeper. I don't want Whizz to ascend, I want it to shoot. I want to get within a million shirts by next fiscal. For that, we have to get our targets into even sharper focus. We've done a good job collection by collection, we know exactly who we are talking to. But what about brand Whizz per se?"

"What about it?" asked Rastogi, "We're getting decent response to the current campaign."

"Yes we are," admitted Nath, eyeing the survey dossier again, "But the results of the current perception survey are hardly cause for whoops of joy. Rival brands such as Le Orleans and Morrison have enhanced their prestige tremendously at our cost during the slack phase. That we still own upper-end associations of 'integrity', 'etiquette' and 'business sense' is just a consolation, to my mind."

"I guess those 'voice of authority' launch ads stuck," mused Rastogi.

"Half an inch out of the jacket, or what was the correct cuff-length?" asked Nath, in mock ignorance, referring to the launch messages that had made a lot of finer points on dress code.

"Yeah, I know what you mean. The market has evolved. We wouldn't dare talk of dress etiquette anymore," said Rastogi.

"Precisely," said Nath, "We need to be clear about what cannot be changed and what must be changed. The brand has not changed, and it's the same person we're talking to. Just that this person has evolved, having travelled across the world and sharpened his sense of fashion."

"Well, let's face it," continued Rastogi, "the market's perception of officewear has shifted towards the casual end of the spectrum. In office after office, whites and pale blues aren't even the norm anymore. All it took was one powerful 'friday dressing' brand, a dotcom wave, and wham-Whizz got repositioned. Yuppies started seeing Whizz as some stiff-collared rule-maker hellbent on covering the walls with hang-ups."

"Two points," said Nath, "one, you're exaggerating the casual wave. Two, dotcom mania is over. Collars have stiffened. But yes, I'm not sure if our response of launching bolder colours has been such a wise idea. The dissonance is apparent. Dress impeccability and casualness send conflicting signals. The brand needs a more cohesive story to tell, overall."

"In that case, we need freedom as a licencee to do some Indian strategic thinking," shrugged Rastogi, "real Indian thinking, and that means none of that one-eyed sharpshooting stuff... we need depth-of-field vision, both eyes open. This isn't an easy market, you know, it is fairly complex."

"Fair enough," said Nath, "The challenge is to reconcile the brand's rule-oriented heritage with contemporary top-end market motivations. Remember, we have to satisfy a set of conditions that appear to be contraries, but doing justice to the brand would mean working out a possibility that does not compromise any condition or spell compulsion."

"Well, the Lycra-fit idea is a starting point, I guess. Do you think we can stretch it to a more generalised brand positioning idea?"

Question: are Nath and Rastogi wasting their effort?

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