SMOOR rebrands beyond chocolate as gifting drives 25–30% revenue
SMOOR says festive gifting now drives 25–30% of revenue as it rolls out a SMOOR 2.0 rebrand, United by Flavors, to sell beyond chocolate.
For SMOOR, Diwali is not just a sales spike. The premium chocolate and dessert brand says festive gifting—especially hampers—now contributes an estimated 25–30% of its revenue. Its Diwali catalogue runs to nearly 90 pages and carries 50 to 60 hamper options, from wood and tin boxes to sustainable bamboo packaging. Corporate buyers can even customise boxes, colours, messages and chocolate-printed logos.
Why SMOOR is stretching beyond chocolate
After 10 years, the Bengaluru-based brand is rolling out a refresh it calls SMOOR 2.0. It is moving away from the older “true chocolate” identity toward “United by Flavors”, a proposition that brings cakes, pastries, desserts, macarons, baklava, cookies and food into the same story. CMO Kanchan Achpal says the earlier identity was deliberately understated while the name was being established.
The shift is an occasion-led brand stretch. Instead of being defined by one category, SMOOR is trying to own more buying moments—gifting, celebration, café visits, dessert cravings.
Gifting is a positioning move, not just revenue
SMOOR allocates roughly 25–30% of its annual marketing budget to October, November and December, including festive visual merchandising. That spend reinforces the idea that SMOOR is a gifting brand. The hampers themselves do much of the persuasion: packaging, customisation and a 90-page catalogue set a premium frame before the chocolate is tasted.
Gifting purchases run on different psychology than self-consumption. Buyers are signalling care, taste and status, so the box is part of the product.
Quick commerce gets its own products
SMOOR is building separate offerings for Blinkit and Zepto rather than listing the same portfolio everywhere. Achpal notes that discounting on quick-commerce platforms can make it hard to sell the same product at the same price across channels. The brand has created channel-specific products, such as a Raksha Bandhan sibling bar and a cookie built on “Half is yours, half is mine”.
Online now contributes about 40% of revenue, up from around 20%, with offline at roughly 60%. SMOOR’s e-commerce journey is only about six months old.
What marketers can take from SMOOR
- Use gifting as an occasion strategy: packaging and hampers carry brand meaning.
- Create separate SKUs for discount-heavy channels instead of fighting price parity.
- Let online demand from new cities guide physical expansion.
- Keep adjacencies such as cafés from overshadowing the core identity.
SMOOR is opening in HSR Layout in October and plans Hyderabad in November or December, while online demand from cities such as Chandigarh, Indore and Nagpur is shaping a flagship search in Delhi-NCR. Achpal says the brand has stayed away from celebrity ambassadors: “For us every customer is an influencer.”
The lesson is not that every brand should become a lifestyle label. It is that a product brand can grow by anchoring itself to occasions, protecting price across channels and letting demand reveal the next market.
Source: Afaqs!
