Adventures of a Salesman in Art World – Part 10

Through this series ‘Adventures of a salesman in art world’, Mr Chandrashekhar Ojha, former DGM Marketing of Camlin continues to share his insightful memories. Throughout his career spread across four decades, he gathered a wealth of insights about the art world through his interactions with artists and art lovers. In this tenth part, he shares his experiences of dealing with the customer expectations and complaints about poster colours. He tackled this tricky situation by bringing R&D and Marketing on the same page with customers, through a series of study tours.

Part 10 – ‘The Study Tour’

Camel Poster Colour is the most popular and versatile product in our range. Though formulated for applied art works on paper, it was used in many applications, on different surfaces by users from different background and also with different expectations. Hence there used to be many issues, which me and my colleagues had to face. Since there was hardly anything wrong with the product, they used to end in a logjam. This was affecting the users’ confidence as well as trade comfort affecting the sales.

We had to find some way out to bring marketing, R&D and consumer on same page. Since the users had a different way of expression and the understanding of marketing and R&D team were on a different level, communicating the issues through writing was also almost impossible. During a discussion with Mrs Rajani Dandekar, I suggested that if a team of marketing and R&D person visit these consumers, understand their applications methodologies, substrate and expectation, the company would be able to understand the issue in detail and also communicate the SOP to consumers for better performance. To my delight it was appreciated and accepted.

Soon a program was chalked out for the joint visit of Mr P V Narayan, Head of Marketing and Mr Manik Salunke, Head of R&D for a week long study tour of Rajasthan. I was entrusted with the responsibilities to plan and arrange the meetings with the consumers and accompany both of them during the tour. I discussed and planned meetings with the artists, artisans, handicraft industries, art material dealers etc. in Udaipur, Nathdwara, Jodhpur, Jaipur, Ajmer and Kishangarh. I was very excited as this tour gave me an opportunity to bring the marketer, formulator and users face to face and create history with it. On a lighter note, I was to get my first chance to fly too.

In Udaipur we visited many legendary miniature artists and understand their working style and how the Camel poster colours perform on their expectations. My friend Mr Lalit Sharma played a very important role in all this as coming from a family of traditional miniature painters, he ensured easy and unrestricted access to the studios and homes of most venerated artists. It was interesting to learn that they liked and used the Golden shade of Camel poster colour but didn’t find the medium suitable for their work and hence put it through a tedious process to wash off the medium and then used the powder with their own medium. Funnily the artists in Jaipur did exactly the opposite, they used to discard the metal powder and use the medium with imported metal powders.

The most exciting discovery in Udaipur was the use of poster colours on wooden toys and furniture created on lathe. The application is just brilliant; the artisans mix liquefied poster colours in molten lacquer, which would form a coloured cake on drying. After the wooden piece is ready for paint coat, they spin the part on lathe and touch the cake of desired shade ensuring a uniform transfer. For finishing they touch the piece with a Kewda leave while spinning it, and surprise! It acquires a high gloss, waterproof and rub-resistant finish, which is absolutely gorgeous and safe too. I think it’s greatest application style discovered by me in my whole career.

The Nathdwara visit was almost an extension of Udaipur as most of the artists are related to each other and the modus operandi is also similar. However, we feasted on the unique recipes of Nathdwara Shreenathji Temple Prasad for lunch. The dinner at Hotel Shikar Badi, a former game lodge of the Udaipur Royals where the dining room is overlooking the watering hole of boars and leopards, was great and both the bosses were not happy as I had not selected such a place for their stay. PVN visited Udaipur later with family and made it a point to stay at Shikar Badi.

Jodhpur was more for visiting the handicraft industry and the artisans working there.  We found poster colours being used on iron, wood and many other surfaces. The wide range of articles made for export market were for indoor as well as outdoor use and hence challenges were many. In fact, the artisans were getting to paint on different objects with change in demand pattern in western markets, but regardless of the substrate they used to work with their friendly poster colours. The poster colours were expected to withstand sun, rain, snow, extreme weather and sub-zero temperature, which it can’t, but the users were not ready to change to other more suited painting medium. We also had a typical Rajasthani meal of Dal, Bati Churma prepared by my mother at my home.

In Jaipur we met the legends like Late Vedpal Sharma ‘Bannu’, Nathulal Varma and others. Bannuji’s studio was filled with exotic natural pigments, great collection of books and wine from across the world. He was man of few words but a very honest. When I asked him whether he uses mineral colours, as almost all miniature painters of Rajasthan claims to do, or Poster colours, he replied that for restoration of old work he uses the mineral colours but for new works, he uses poster colours only. We visited the Blue Pottery studio of veteran Late Kalyan Singh Shekhawat. In Kishangarh we visited only one art factory and gathered information on their work before going to Ajmer. There we met Prof Ram Jaiswal to learn about materials from a water colourist’s perspective.

The tour was successful in making the HO team aware of the various facets of poster colour usage and helped them in fulfilling legitimate expectations of the users. For me it was a great learning opportunity and I am happy that I was part of it. I don’t know for sure but I think it as well as a few more initiatives, played important role in giving my career an exciting twist. Curious? Stay tuned for Season 2 of the series!

Chandrashekhar Ojha