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  Hyundai launches sedan Verna
New Delhi, Sep 25 Hyundai Motor India Ltd (HMIL) Monday launched its sixth generation sedan Verna for the mid-size Indian car segment.

"The mid-size car segment in India is very exciting and is having immense potential," Hyundai Motor India managing director Hueng Soo Lheem told a press conference here.

HMIL, a 100 percent subsidiary of South Korean car manufacturer Hyundai Motor, is the second largest and the fastest growing car manufacturer in India.

The new Hyundai Verna comes in three petrol variants and one diesel variant having 54 percent of local content. The company plans to increase it to almost 70 percent.

"With the launch of this car we are targeting leadership in this segment," said Arvind Sazena, vice president (sales and marketing) of HMIL.

HMIL is the largest exporter of passenger cars, with exports of over Rs.18 billion recording a growth of 27.2 percent over 2004.

The sixth largest automaker in the world has a manufacturing unit in Chennai where Verna is manufactured.

HMIL has also announced plans to launch a second plant that will produce 300,000 units annually, raising its total production capacity to 600,000 units by 2007.

The automaker currently boasts of 162 dealer networks and has plans to increase this to 200 by the end of this year.

The introductory prices of Hyundai Verna (petrol) is Rs.629,000 to 639,000 while the diesel variant costs Rs.735,000.
 

Milan Fashion Week invites first Indian buyer
New Delhi, Sep 24  The Milan Fashion Week has for the first time invited an Indian buyer, Kimaya, to be part of its ongoing fashion extravaganza.

Pradeep and Neha Hirani will lead the eight-member merchandising and forecasting team to conduct business at the fashion week that started Saturday.

Kimaya, a leading Indian apparel chain, represented India at the London Fashion Week from Sep 18 to 22 as well.

"For the first time ever, India is being recognised, not as a seller but as an important buyer at international fashion events. It is a proud moment, not only for Kimaya, but the entire fashion fraternity in India. Our participation in the London and Milan fashion weeks is a huge step towards creating a springboard for European designers to launch and extend their brands in India," said Pradeep Hirani, chairperson of Kimaya.

Kimaya represents 108 designers, including designers from Pakistan, Malaysia and South Africa. The chain hopes to now include European designers and brands.

With Kimaya's participation at the London and Milan Fashion Weeks, it is evident that the European fashion industry is taking serious note of India's growing potential as a fashion destination.
 

Salon business booms in post-Soviet Ukraine
DPA

Kiev, Sep 18 During the dark pre-1991 days of Soviet Ukraine, only two beauty salons served the needs of more than one million women then in the capital Kiev - and appointments were fought over tooth and nail. Today, an estimated 2,000 salons operate legally and illegally in the city, supported by an army of tens of thousands of self-employed beauty professionals. Nationwide, beauty salons outnumber restaurants and grocery stores combined.

"The demand for female beauty in Ukraine, is like the demand for rice in China," said Inge Shishchenko, a Kiev-based cosmetics consultant. "The secret to an attractive appearance is hard work, and no one works harder at being pretty than our Ukrainian girls."

It certainly looks that way.

On the tree-shaded promenades in the bigger towns like Kiev's Khreschtyk Street or Odessa's Deribassovsky Boulevard, stunning women traipse by in quantities exceeding most major European cities, and at times resembling the starlet parades of Cannes or Hollywood.

The story of how the Ukrainian peasant girl Roksolana through beauty and guile became the favourite wife of a 16th century Turkish sultan, and so the effective ruler of the Ottoman Empire, is a standard history lesson in Ukrainian schools.

Mikhail Zhvanetsky, a popular Ukrainian comic, even jokes: "In summer on the Deribassovsky, men are walking into lamp posts, it's like flies on a windshield! There are too many beautiful women. They are uncontrolled by law, and your eyes don't know which way to look! It's dangerous!"

Feminism has had difficulty gaining a foothold in Ukraine.

Even politician Julia Timoshenko, a 40-something former prime minister feared by most male politicians for her oratorical skills, admits she is a just as enthusiastic customer for the beauty industry as her less accomplished sisters.

"Every girl wants to be beautiful, to have a pleasing appearance," the elegant Timoshenko said. "In this I am no different from any other Ukrainian woman."

At the top of the market, women like Timoshenko looking to invest in their appearance can visit a palatial building where classical background music is played as she chooses between health club and cafe under the same roof.

Besides the fingernail specialist ($10) and the hair stylist ($50-$100), she can have full-body cleansings ($100-$200), and vitamin and even Botox injections ($100-$500 a treatment).

At the stylish Kosmetika Luks salon, businesswoman Lesya Zhigalevska turned down the chocolate mask ($80) in favour of a 90-minute facial treatment culminating in a collagen-thread massage, in all costing a bit fewer than $50.

"I do as much for the quiet and relaxation, as for the treatment itself," Zhigalevska said.

Pretty much all international technology can offer is available to a Ukrainian woman willing to grit her teeth for the sake of hair-free skin: chemical washes, leg waxing, electrolysis, intensive-light pulses, and good old Soviet-era lasers to zap each individual follicle.

Even Ukraine's famous mineral riches - the country boasts reserves of everything from antimony to uranium - stand ready to defend the beauty of the nation.

Ukrainian clay is, according to a Kosmetolog magazine article "superior to foreign substitutes - and in all ways healthy".

The procedure is simplicity itself: for whatever mineral the patient's skin lacks, the beauty professional chooses the appropriate-coloured clay.

"Reddish clays such as in our eastern provinces are high in iron and copper, so use this clay for a patient deficient in this mineral," the article advised.

At the lower rungs of the market ladder, a beauty salon is one of the few private businesses a Ukrainian woman can open on her own for not much start-up capital, and expect a regular income.

"My job is to help," said Svitlana Drach, owner-operator of the single-room Nasha Krasunia salon in the village Boyarka. "Of course I give discounts. In this business my patients only pay what they can."

Fraud, or more kindly faith-based beauty services, remains a main risk in Ukraine's take-no-prisoners beauty industry. Among popular treatments ranging from the iffy to the downright risky are magnetic massages, ultrasonic scrubs, and "cyrotherapy", in which the "technician" freezes the "patient's" skin slightly.

"This is why for a Ukrainian woman what is most important is the quality of the beauty supplies, and the professional skill of the cosmetologist, rather than the interior of the salon," Drach explained.

"Spending money on beauty is not enough for our girls - they want results."

"A Ukrainian woman will always try to be beautiful, it is our tradition, it is part of our culture," Shishchenko said. "The will to be beautiful is in her blood."

IANS
 

Tedious tasks, annoying customers waste company time
Hamburg, Tedious, busy work and annoying customers waste the most company time, according to a representative survey by German research organisation Gewis-Institute. The survey was done at the instance of the Munich-based magazine Freundin. Busy work was the biggest reason for lost productivity, according to 34 percent of respondents. Annoying customers were cited by 33 percent. A total of 1,048 respondents aged between 18 and 60 were interviewed for the survey. ( Read full news ) 

Wills Lifestyle to sponsor India Fashion Week
New Delhi, Ending weeks of uncertainty, the Fashion Design Council of India (FDCI) Wednesday announced it had signed on designer label Wills Lifestyle as the sponsor for the India Fashion Week (IFW), which will hitherto be a bi-annual event. "This is the first time since its inception (in 2000) that the India Fashion Week will be presented in Delhi and Mumbai in an international format to cover the two seasonal markets of autumn/winter and spring/summer," FDCI director general Rati Vinay Jha said at a press conference to announce the three-year tie-up with the ITC-owned brand. According to her, "2006 will be all about a new beginning. It will be all about giving India Fashion Week a whole new international look, theme and direction".

( Read full news ) 
  
Rave styles for raven locks!
New Delhi, Having a healthy mane, giving it an extra sheen or an ultra chic bob has become a major fad across Indian cities. Hair care is in, with infinite styles - curls, plain, twisted, permed or even straightened. Hair couture is big business - scissor sculptors equipped with an array of styling products, an assortment of gels and therapy that will give your locks a fabulous look and make the head stand apart. From Loreal to herbal, Shahnaz to Garnier, hair styling, therapy and coiffure have come of age in India with both men and women enjoying all the attention that their hair can get."Hair care is about giving an electric sheen to the mane in a fashion-dominated world," says celebrity stylist Sylvie in Delhi, who charges anything upwards of Rs.1,000 for a swell cut that could mean either chopping, trimming or subtly manicuring hair to set it into a chic hairdo.( Read full news ) 

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