Quality marks can give your products an edge over others and help you win more customers
Especially in commodities, what would be the stand of a product entering the global market place, without a known and strong brand promoting it? Chances are meek that it would click with the consumers just like that. Sure, the company can opt to do a massive brand-building exercise, to win the confidence of the consumers.
However, branding, as we know it, takes years together. This is when companies could ride upon prevalent marks of trust, like Hallmarking for gold, Woolmark for woolen products, etc. These marks, at the very least, give a headstart to the product for striking B2B deals and winning confidence of the end consumer to quite an extent. Over decades, government as well as non-profit organizations such as Bureau of Indian Standards (BIS), The Woolmark Company, Cotton Council International, and more have promoted marks that assure quality of products.
Woolmark is a seal of assurance that can be leveraged as a product promotional tool, by the wool consuming industries such as fabrics, knitwear, shawls, carpets, etc. Since its institution in 1964 by the International Wool Secretariat (IWS) – now called The Woolmark Company, Woolmark has been “a sort of a certification trademark in the world of business.” The mark itself came into being for enhancement of the wool business – be it the image, productivity, technical and marketing aspects, etc. Giving detailed inputs on Woolmark to DARE, S K Chaudhuri, Regional Director of The Woolmark Company (India & Southeast Asia), said, “how can a company enter into the global market without having to spend billions of dollars and many years on promotion? Woolmark gives companies that very opportunity, ready to be served on a plate – an easy entry.”
As stated by Chaudhuri, any wool consuming business, company, trading partner and such can get the mark issued to them, provided they conform to the rigid standards set by The Woolmark Company. The long and short of this conformation is to make products that are 100% pure wool. While this is the most important criteria for getting the mark issued, there are several international quality specifications, standard and norms, that need to be met. Besides this, the details of the applicant company are also thoroughly checked. This includes an assaying of the company’s management, manufacturing setup, procedures, etc. As you might have figured by now, The Woolmark Company is extremely serious about maintaining the sanctity of Woolmark. The company keeps a regular check on the products using marks from the Woolmark family (i.e. Woolmark, Woolmark Blend, and Wool Blend). They even go to the extent of doing random checks in the market to keep an eye out for misuse.
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| “How can a company enter into the global market without having to spend billions of dollars and many years on promotion? Woolmark gives companies that very opportunity ready to be served on a plate – an easy entry” -- S K Chaudhuri |
Besides Woolmark, there are two other quality marks issued by The Woolmark Company. Woolmark Blend is for products that have 50% to less than 100% wool content. Then there is Wool Blend, which is for products with 30% to less than 100% wool content. These marks, like Woolmark, are internationally accepted as marks of quality.
The process for applying for all of these marks is the same and simple to the extent that any entrepreneur can do it himself. It involves filling up of a simple form, and sending it across to The Woolmark Company’s office in India, in New Delhi. After this, a set of laid down procedure gets into play, in which The Woolmark Company does all the screening.
Once the application is properly sieved, a sample of the product applied for marking is required to be submitted to them. This sample is then sent across the central laboratory of The Woolmark Company, which is for an interim period in Australia. The lab’s test results typically come out in about three to four weeks, and this is mainly because samples from the world over go into this lab. Soon enough, there are plans to set up labs in India (Delhi), and China as well. If the test results okay the quality, a unique number (à la barcode) is issued to that particular product. After this, the company can start using the Woolmark seal for this product. “If the product fails to make it through the labs test,” Chaudhuri adds, “we don’t cut them (the applicant) off. We help them in understanding the cause of failure and give guidelines for improvement, so that they can resubmit the sample. There have been instances where a product got the certification after four resubmissions.”
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