A long-term durable and profitable partnership
San Marco Group is a family-owned business in its fourth generation, leader in Italy in the architectural coatings’ segment, as well as in ETICS, organic plasters and effect paints for the building industry, active in over 100 countries around the world. The Group owns six brands and is currently guided by Pietro Geremia, President and CEO. It counts seven production units in Europe and three commercial companies that distribute products characterised by an innovative, technologically advanced and truly sustainable approach.
San Marco Group is collaborating with Asian Paints Limited, what does the partnership entail?
Pietro Geremia: Novacolor, premium “design” brand of the San Marco Group dedicated to high end interior decoration, was selected by Asian Paints over a decade ago as sole supplier in Europe of organic lime-based plasters, premium pearlescent effect paints as well as micro cement and resin floorings. This new agreement involves an upgrade from a supplier model to a business partner, with a co-branding activity which will officially expose and market Novacolor decorative paints, and therefore San Marco Group, online and offline, on product packaging, collaterals, as well as in all the over 30.000 premium Asian Paints dealers’ network across the country.
Thanks to Novacolor’s premium décor products, San Marco Group enters officially the effect paints and organic plaster segment in India, with the aim to support the Asian Paints leadership in the interior decor segment and to make the Italian design affordable to everyone.
What will be the first steps in the collaboration?
Geremia: San Marco Group and Asian Paints are aware of the importance of moving from solely aesthetically to sustainably consistent and groundbreaking wall and floor paints. For this reason, we started by redesigning part of our product offer introducing newly formulated organic plasters based on lime and clay technology, which have recently been awarded the IACG certificate by Eurofins.
In addition, all the pearlescent wall paints are now based on the ”biomass approach”, a binder of new generation formulated with agricultural waste. As a first step, we are also aligning packaging and collaterals, as well as digital communication on all platforms, since the digital impact is vital to guarantee a faster growth of sales and brand recognition.
What are your plans for the Indian market?
Geremia: With Asian Paints we are looking at establishing a long term, durable and profitable partnership for both, that will help us grow and transfer the design innovation typical of our Group to a huge market like India. We will also maximise the partnership by working on common projects that will certainly engage and involve our R&D teams, as well as on marketing activities. Here we still have a long journey to go, in order to attract more Indian consumers and make the Italian designed products available for all. There is a lot more in the pipeline and we shall disclose further plans during the year!
