| Customer | A large Indian switch brand entering fans |
| Working together since | 2020 |
| Context | Established switch brand entering fans |
| The question they brought | If a switch comes in twenty colours, why does a fan come in two? |
| What we built | 9+ colour combinations each across wall, table and pedestal |
| Result | Volume up 300% across the first two years |
A large Indian switch brand came to us in 2020 as a newcomer in fans and anything but a newcomer in electricals. Already long established in wiring devices, they arrived with a question the fan industry had never answered honestly.
If a switch comes in twenty colours, why does a fan come in two?
In switches, colour is a given. A brand offers twenty or more finishes because the switch plate is part of the room and buyers choose it that way. In fans, the same buyer furnishing the same room was being offered white, or black.
Their read was that this was not a consumer preference. It was a supply constraint the industry had stopped questioning. They were right.
Why fans stayed white and black
A fan is not one moulded part. It is a body, a blade set, a guard ring, a motor cover, a cap, and a base or stand — half a dozen separately moulded components that have to look like they came from the same product.
Most fan OEMs buy those parts from different moulders: different machines, different masterbatch lots, different suppliers. Each component passes inspection on its own and the assembled fan is subtly wrong — the blade a shade off the body, the cap a shade off the guard. At white and black an OEM can just about get away with it, because those are the two colours every moulder runs constantly and matches by habit. Step outside them and the mismatch is visible on the shelf.
So the category stayed at two colours, and the real reason was never said out loud.
White is the hardest colour, not the easiest
This is counter-intuitive and it is exactly where competing suppliers were struggling.
White has nowhere to hide. Two whites from different masterbatch lots read as a clean white and a faintly yellow white when they sit next to each other under retail lighting. A mid-tone colour absorbs small variation; white advertises it. Matching whites across components sourced from several vendors — parts that individually passed and collectively did not — was precisely the problem other OEMs could not solve for them.
What we did: make colour a development exercise, not a procurement one
Moulding is in-house. Our sister unit runs twelve injection moulding machines from 80T to 220T, which means one colour decision can be applied to every moulded component of a fan, from the same masterbatch, on machines under one roof.
That changed what was possible at the sampling stage. We could:
- mould and hand them physical colour samples quickly, instead of describing a shade and waiting on a vendor
- iterate properly — try a shade, look at it assembled under light, change it, look again
- hold the chosen colour across every component, because every component was ours
The range we built
The output was a full colour range: more than nine colour combinations each across wall, table and pedestal — a colour range in fans that finally matched the logic of their own switch range.
What happened
Volume with them grew 300% across the first two years.
Worth being straight about the base: they were new to fans in 2020 and we started from nothing, so a percentage that size is flattered by a small denominator. The more meaningful version of the claim is that a brand with no fan history built a visibly differentiated range and scaled it inside two years — and the differentiator was colour, delivered by a manufacturing capability rather than a price concession.
What this shows
Colour width in fans is a moulding question, not a marketing one. Any OEM can promise you a colour. Holding that colour across six components, in white, at volume, across a full season, is a function of how many machines you control and whether the masterbatch is the same on all of them.
It is also where backward integration earns its keep. Not on per-unit price — on what becomes possible. A brand whose parts come from four moulders cannot credibly launch a nine-colour range. The reason we could is the twelve machines, not anything we say about ourselves.
If colour is your differentiator
Send us the shades you want and we will mould samples rather than send a swatch chart. If you are working to an existing brand palette — from switches, from wiring devices, from anything else you already sell — say so, and we will match to it across every component. Start there, or call +91 9177 068 845.