In the last eight years, TSSIPL has transformed from a category-focused distributor into a strategic brand platform, recognized for creating strong OEM networks, sustainable brand portfolios, and design-led product lines. With a diverse presence across toys, stationery, homeware, and sports goods, its house brands (Skoodle, Peggy Oliver, Braven) alongside global IPs (Marvel, Peppa Pig, Disney, PAW Patrol) embody this evolution
Medianews4u.com caught up with Shobhit Singh, MD, CEO The Stone Sapphire India Pvt. Ltd. (TSSIPL), following the unveiling of the company’s new brand identity and logo.
Q. Over the past eight years, TSSIPL has evolved from being a distributor to a strategic brand platform that focusses on building trusted OEM networks, sustainable brand portfolios, and design-first product lines. Could you talk about the progress made and the big challenge in scaling up?
TSSIPL has changed over the last eight years from a traditional distributor to a value-driven brand platform that offers internal design capabilities, OEM-led manufacturing, and comprehensive market intelligence.
The advent of Skoodle, one of the largest brands of recycled pencils on the market today, and its pervasiveness serve as the best examples of this development. It has been a major scaling up to ensure consistency in quality and compliance across a rapidly expanding multi-category portfolio while maintaining operational agility and sustainable practices. Additionally, ensuring proper maintenance of the supply chain network.
Q. Could you shed light on the vision behind TSSIPL’s brand refresh and new identity? Is the goal to improve brand perception? What role did AI and data analytics play in this regard?
The brand update for TSSIPL serves as a reminder of TSSIPL’s designing, sustainability-led ecosystem that offers more than distribution and affirms compliance, trust and market readiness. Although the new brand identity aimed to elevate brand perception, the key goal was to demonstrate TSSIPL’s maturity as a strategic brand.
Now with a proven track record of seven years, delivering the last mile delivery to international brands in India, we wanted the brand logo to reflect what we do: a mark when put on the product label, promises the brand to reach its consumer’s doors. TSSIPL today ensures 30,000+ retail touchpoints pan India with the products from our brand portfolio.
When a brand wants to ensure it is available through General Trade, Modern Trade, Ecommerce or Quick commerce, it will bear the mark of THE STONE SAPPHIRE, a marketer, a distributor, and its true brand custodian.
AI and data analytics were critical in shaping portfolio decisions, uncovering new consumer insight and improving go-to-market strategies to ensure the new identity kept pace with changing consumer expectations and market dynamics. The identity is thus refined and kept in pace with the new consumers trend, the no fuss, clean, the one that speaks about our purpose.
Q. Is the growth focus in the next couple of years going to equally split between in-house brands like Skoodle, Peggy Oliver, and Braven and global IPs like Marvel, Peppa Pig?
Indeed, TSSIPL’s growth strategy focuses on both pillars—growing homegrown brands (like Skoodle, Peggy Oliver, and Braven) through product innovation, internal research arm the Skoodle Toy lab, and retail penetration through shop in shop models , and continuing to build global IPs like Marvel and Peppa Pig through licensing and the correct go-to-market strategy.
By creating resilient brands that appeal to more consumers through global IP’s as well as homegrown brands, TSSIPL can operate with stronger control over the value it is creating across different categories.
Q. The product line spans toys, stationery, homeware, and sports goods. What is the game plan to grow in this area by entering FMCG products that target children and is data analytics key here to help figure what is required and what isn’t?
Even though TSSIPL does not intend to enter the FMCG space, the company is focusing on enhancing its lifestyle portfolio covering various domains, which include toys, stationery, homeware and sports goods. Brands like Skoodle (sustainable stationery, fun scholastic range), Peggy Oliver (Premium lifestyle accessories), and Braven India (sports and fitness) are creating design-led ecosystems that reflect manifold consumer aspirations.
The recent introduction of Glimm, a premium porcelain kitchenware brand, shows a strong commitment to marry functional design with intrinsic value for the modern household.
Data analytics plays a huge part in shaping these expansions as they assist TSSIPL to identify emerging consumer trends, vias and gaps in product supply, expose product adjacencies and provide a context for making strategic decisions based on consumer insights.
Even without breaking into FMCG, TSSIPL´s expansion, history and culture provide a base for its innovation that provides purpose, combined with established OEM production capability outputs, it´s desire to design quality lifestyle solutions remains undiminished.
Q. Is the TG parents? Which are the markets being targeted for growth? What role does pester power among children play in the company’s sales strategy?
Yes, parents, especially millennial and urban caregivers, can be an important target audience because they influence purchasing decisions for multiple categories (toys, stationery, sports homeware, etc). TSSIPL is also focussed on children as end users, especially through licensed IPs and the children’s design-led products. Growth markets are Tier One cities and Tier Two emerging cities for example, where there is increasing demand for quality branded products.
Pester power has been a key driver of TSSIPL’s success, where affectionately designed characters and a great design language allows TSSIPL to build emotional connections with children, which although indirectly, can sway purchasing decisions in households.
Q. What are the marketing activities and innovations that the company is doing in the coming months?
TSSIPL is preparing for a consolidated marketing launch based on its modernised brand identity and increasing lifestyle product offerings. Including retail activations, trade show activations (including Toy Biz, Paperworld, HGH India), and online and offline campaigns. Of special note, TSSIPL will launch Glimm, the premium-luxury porcelain kitchenware brand being developed for modern Indian families looking for elegance and everyday purposes.
Going forward TSSIPL is going to invest heavily in ecommerce Operations, and Alignment with Quick commerce, as well as revamp of its D2C channel for Skoodle Toys , Stationery , to give a more valuable shopping experience to its Phygital Consumer. The company will invest in narrative storytelling creative categories with brands targetted at emotional connection and to drive retail outcomes for Skoodle, Peggy Oliver and Braven India.
TSSIPL is well placed to consistently harness together its learning and capabilities to create a consistent, elevated brand experience in coming months through effective omnichannel strategy delivery.
Q. How important is experiential marketing through things like having a presence in shopping malls?
Very Effective, in fact the Experiential marketing through shopping malls and large-scale exhibitions is one of the key drivers for TSSIPL’s engagement intent. This form of activation creates consumer touchpoints and deeper engagements, where consumers feel confident about the products, regardless of category, and strengthen recall. TSSIPL also participates in various trade shows, as the Toy Biz, Paperworld, Aahar, HGH India 2025, that become a very responsive testing and launch pad for our new product designs, and marketing campaigns.
Not only do these formats offer camera ready opportunities for the ‘brand’ and brand storytelling across different portfolios – Skoodle’s sustainability drive through stationery products, Braven India’s fitness collection etc., they also offer a chance for real-time consumer feedback and engagement, underscoring TSSIPL’s desire to be positioned as a high-trust, experience-led lifestyle brand platform.
Q. Could you talk about the company’s digital strategy? Does it create content on various platforms like Instagram, Youtube? How does it participate in the social media conversation?
Undoubtedly, digital plays a prime role in TSSIPL’s brand strategy. The company manages brand-specific Instagram channels (i.e., SkoodlePlay, Peggy Oliver, and Braven India) using brand-based teams to create content specific to the platform and relevant to the target audience. The corporate communications and industry engagement aspects of TSSIPL use LinkedIn for disseminating company updates and establishing thought leadership.
As far as direct-to-consumer, all brands have their own D2C websites, which create a more personal customer experience and engagement. The Skoodle website is being re-created as a multi-brand, consumer-focused website, and will be a great way to communicate the full portfolio of toys and stationery in an efficient way.
TSSIPL’s digital thinking is focussed on building a community, functional storytelling, as well as platform-led content strategies that provide the underlying framework for each brand to remain active and continue to be part of social conversations.
Q. What tactics work in gaining the trust of companies like Hasbro, Marvel? Also your views on how the MCU has grown the Marvel brand exponentially in the country and the learnings from it?
The trust of global licensors like Disney, Hasbro and Marvel rests on three primary pillars; global compliance, local market insight, and execution excellence across supply, marketing, and retail channels. TSSIPL’s hybrid approach, which combines proprietary brands (Skoodle, Peggy Oliver, and Braven India) as well as licensed IP, showcases scalability, reliability, and category knowledge. Certifications such as EN71, ISO, BIS for Electronic and Non electronic toys, and SMETA 4 Pillars, further strengthen its credentials as a partner able to deliver solutions for global licensors seeking meaningful market access and growth in India.
This change in brand stature is also true for Marvel as the Marvel Cinematic Universe (MCU) has successfully taken the Marvel brand from a boutique book publisher to cultural phenomenon in India. The success of MCU is due to a multi-year commitment to a consistent storyline, well-developed characters, and a theme that resonates with audiences across age groups.
The lesson for TSSIPL and its future relationship with Marvel is the value of story-based licensing; leveraging publicly known characters for merchandise only works against building emotional engagement and relevance on a local level, building depth, fondness and shelf impact over a period of time, instead. This principle is still with TSSIPL and has served as TSSIPL’s guide in building both globally and homegrown brands into products across categories.
Q. Could you talk about the process of setting up an integrated OEM ecosystem and the role that AI has played here?
TSSIPL works with small and medium-scale manufacturers and has therefore built a resilient, value-driven supply chain using developed, long-term partnerships based on shared quality levels, compliance protocols (ISO, EN71, BIS, SMETA), and a great degree of market intelligence. While TSSIPL does not physically manufacture goods, it utilizes decentralised production network to offer sped-to-market solutions at competitive prices, while continually innovating in its licensed and owned brand programs.
Artificial Intelligence is becoming an increasingly more critical strategic enabler—collating insights from demand forecasting, inventory planning, and category whitespace identification—that enable TSSIPL to redefine consumer needs and improve co-development in sourcing and design, ensuring their product will be scalable when ready to be marketed.
By applying AI to data intelligence, TSSIPL’s partner ecosystem remains agile while aligned with each brand’s ambitions in a consumer-shifting market. For instance, AI support in Design software’s, such as Photoshop and Adobe creative cloud, Power BI and SAP integrated analytics, marketplaces forecast and trend analysis used for preparing for the big sale days, is a huge adaptation internally this year in our operations.
And this is just the beginning. We are contemplating integrating AI in our warehouse and production operations to manage the entire supply chain partners with real time insights and strengthening our MIS teams across the depots to ensure faster and reliable deliveries.
Q. Could you shed light on the B2B marketing strategy like participating in retail, trade events?
TSSIPL has a B2B marketing model that depends on intensive participation with significant trade fairs and exhibitions, as they are pivotal spaces to launch collections and engage retailers, distributors and institutional customers.
Recent examples are AAHAR 2025, where TSSIPL launched the Peggy Oliver HORECA Collection for the hospitality segment, and HGH India 2025, which launched Glimm, TSSIPL’s premium homeware brand, highlight engagement opportunities like these.
These exhibitions bring a higher level of seriousness to TSSIPL’s innovation and category development goals but most importantly these shows bring TSSIPL closer to its reputation as a trustworthy partner in building brands and distribution partnerships.
In addition to securing their visibility through trade shows, TSSIPL also focusses on relationship-based selling, providing market intelligence and tailored presentations that position TSSIPL as a partner, not supplier, for long-term sustainable growth to its portfolio.
This concept also spans its wider portfolio of brands across different consumer segments, including Skoodle’s environmental focussed stationery and Braven India’s youth/consumer sporting goods.
Q. Will AI upend the licensing and merchandising business in the coming five years. If so how?
Absolutely, AI is set to change the licensing and merchandising landscape in the next five years. AI will give licensees and brand keepers more valuable, faster, and actionable insights. This will turn everything from trend predictions and consumer behaviour studies to product mapping and measuring brand performance on every platform into outright science.
For TSSIPL, which runs across its own and licensed brands, such as Skoodle, Peggy Oliver, Braven India, AI will help to provide more personalisation at the design level, improve SKU performance forecasts, and automate compliance (especially important given the demands of working with global licensors, all of whom want accuracy, speed, and scale).
AI will help facilitate smarter content-to-product connections and a new generation of dynamic licensing strategies that will adjust to audience anticipation. Instead of reactive seasonal product cycles, the future will give way to proactive, insight-led product innovation, enabling TSSIPL and partners to create faster, with more responsive, data-validated, and emotionally connected product ecosystems, ultimately allowing the whole merchandising supply chain to function more efficiently, creatively, and in ways that are more aligned with the consumer.
