Traders to not supply goods to e-tailers over lesser pricing issue

I bought all my mobiles from flipkart since it's inception as no shop can match those online prices . I'm happy . Sc**w brick and mortar shops .
 
ssslayer said:
On the other hand it should hence be none of our concern (as customers) since the sellers selling constantly at price below cost will lead them to windup of shop (no profit).
Which means bye bye WSRetail (and others) if it does continue with "predatory pricing".
Which also means the situation will become the same as it was before e-tailers came into existence in India.
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No.. you don't understand. These large online retailers are still running on loss. They have the money to suffer the loss for a few years. Their target is not immediate. They are clearing space for them.. driving the small scale sellers out of business. It won't be WSRetail going out of business but your neighbourhood mobile phone shops. (I just took phone shops as an example)

Just consider this, 4years back.. all your phones were bought from your trusted dealer in your nearby town. Now??
So who is losing?
 
rdst_1 said:
Bigbyte pretty much summed it up perfectly. If you guys can't see what's wrong in that, I got nothing to add.
What they are doing is not only unethical, it's also against anti-competition laws. In France, Walmart, which was doing the same thing, was told to either stop selling the product or sell it at the market price.
All this would have been hunky dory if our country, like China, had opportunity for people to take jobs in the manufacturing industry at good wages. But that is not how the setup is at the moment and until we can challenge China or put regressive customs on all things made in China, where will all these people who will get displaced go. They way our middle-men are setup, it does make stuff expensive, but it also provides jobs to many people. If we are calling them out on being selfish and greedy, aren't we as consumers being the same when we decide to close our eyes towards such anti-competetion practices, just so we get a better deal.
Ironically, the sellers who are selling via Amazon despite knowing what they are doing, are digging their own graves.
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This whole thing is based on the presumption that offline dealers are ethical. They are anything but ethical. Most are jackals ready to pounce on you any moment.
 
aok said:
No.. you don't understand. These large online retailers are still running on loss. They have the money to suffer the loss for a few years. Their target is not immediate. They are clearing space for them.. driving the small scale sellers out of business. It won't be WSRetail going out of business but your neighbourhood mobile phone shops. (I just took phone shops as an example)

Just consider this, 4years back.. all your phones were bought from your trusted dealer in your nearby town. Now??
So who is losing?
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Trusted dealer? LOL Yeah you can trust them to fcuk you over at every chance they get. And you have to take it with a smile.
 
I used to buy regularly from a shop in Chandni Chowk(local electronics market in Kolkata). 2 month ago, I bought 3 USB OTG cables from them at Rs.100 apiece. I tries to haggle but the guy did not budge. I trusted that guy and hence paid him the money.
Later I found out that the same thing was being sold in the footpath for Rs.40. Even I had bought it from Ebay, I could have had it home delivered for Rs.70.
6-7 months back, I had bought an Enter USB sound card for Rs.160 from him. The same thing was available in Ebay at around Rs.70-80.

I used to trust that guy since he had sourced many a hard to find item for me and my friends. But after this, I will never go back to him unless I require something very urgently.
 
it seems like a neo-super-predator is trying to prey upon the long-established-in-the-prey-chain (lesser?!) predator to gain territorial-dominance of the 'hunting-grounds'; meanwhile, the traditional common meek prey is gladly getting swayed by the sight of the consumption-fervour inducing florid illusory lollipop being swung by the super-P, without regard for anything else but its own well-being, and will continue to do so till the sight lasts, as it knows that its perennial traditional predator would leave no chance to pounce back upon it with renewed ferocity as it was wont to do earlier, if/once it gets some leeway from the clutches of the super-P!

biology school-lesson on food/prey-chain revisited, & retold in adaptation to the kingdom of the most bestial of all beasts!
 
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Party Monger said:
This whole thing is based on the presumption that offline dealers are ethical. They are anything but ethical. Most are jackals ready to pounce on you any moment.
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I personally can't agree with you, because I have never had any big bad incident with a shopkeeper, but I ain't saying they are saints either. But at least their aim is not to burn anyone to the ground. What these companies are doing with predatory pricing is akin to a planned attack. There is a reason I dropped my plans of going into retail sales and that's solely because of this issue. The thing is that no field is safe these days as the govt doesn't give a damn about safeguarding the interests of the people. And that is my major worry. People over here aren't too worried because their livelihood ain't at stake here. But who knows tomorrow big companies in other fields try to annihilate local competition by bribing the politicians. I already see companies making forays in agriculture by trying to force genetically modified seeds and EU trying to capture the milk industry by highly subsidizing milk exports.
So I hope you can see that I am against the environment that is being created which is unsuitable for young entrepreneurs as safeguarding the interests of local businesses is not a priority of the govt.
I do agree with you and think that these shops had it coming as most of them are tax defaulters and never pay the right taxes, but what is happening to them isn't justice. It might be karma, but I would certainly prefer that they get punished rather than attacked.
 
hotshot05 said:
I used to buy regularly from a shop in Chandni Chowk(local electronics market in Kolkata). 2 month ago, I bought 3 USB OTG cables from them at Rs.100 apiece. I tries to haggle but the guy did not budge. I trusted that guy and hence paid him the money.
Later I found out that the same thing was being sold in the footpath for Rs.40. Even I had bought it from Ebay, I could have had it home delivered for Rs.70.
6-7 months back, I had bought an Enter USB sound card for Rs.160 from him. The same thing was available in Ebay at around Rs.70-80.

I used to trust that guy since he had sourced many a hard to find item for me and my friends. But after this, I will never go back to him unless I require something very urgently.
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Seen this one too many. If you buy something from a shop, its priced more even if the very same thing is available at 1/3rd the rate on the footpath. Specifically with respect to mobile screen guards.

On a different note, a friend needed a LAN wire. She asked me to go along to get the same from a nearby shop - the guy quoted an exorbitant rate. For that price, you could easily get a LAN crimper, two jacks, and re crimp the broken wire yourself. So, trusted dealer goodbye. His laptop rates too were on the higher side.
 
vivek.krishnan said:
Seen this one too many. If you buy something from a shop, its priced more even if the very same thing is available at 1/3rd the rate on the footpath. Specifically with respect to mobile screen guards.

On a different note, a friend needed a LAN wire. She asked me to go along to get the same from a nearby shop - the guy quoted an exorbitant rate. For that price, you could easily get a LAN crimper, two jacks, and re crimp the broken wire yourself. So, trusted dealer goodbye. His laptop rates too were on the higher side.
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And you also know the reason for that, don't you.
Shopkeeper has to pay rent for the shop, electricity at higher rates and also pay the attendants that he employs. But you get the option to check out different products, get the product in your hand the moment you pay and even checking the product for DOA, in case of certain products. As for your example about scratch guards, I see shopkeepers applying scratch guards for Rs. 200, that I buy for Rs. 20 and my supplier buys for Rs. 7. Mobile phone shops' major earnings are through sales of accessories because the margins for an average seller are pretty pathetic to say the least.
It's the same for every business. A free lancer will be much cheaper than contracting a company to write a software for you. And from what I have heard from my friends in the IT industry, even there the companies charge exorbitantly compared to the work that is being done.
 
rdst_1 said:
And you also know the reason for that, don't you.
Shopkeeper has to pay rent for the shop, electricity at higher rates and also pay the attendants that he employs. But you get the option to check out different products, get the product in your hand the moment you pay and even checking the product for DOA, in case of certain products. As for your example about scratch guards, I see shopkeepers applying scratch guards for Rs. 200, that I buy for Rs. 20 and my supplier buys for Rs. 7. Mobile phone shops' major earnings are through sales of accessories because the margins for an average seller are pretty pathetic to say the least.
It's the same for every business. A free lancer will be much cheaper than contracting a company to write a software for you. And from what I have heard from my friends in the IT industry, even there the companies charge exorbitantly compared to the work that is being done.
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Attendents - yes. DOA - both are same. Electricity - cant really say, since I dont think its that expensive.

Accessories - I dont mind paying extra if they are good. If they are the same on the roadside and in a shop, why should I have to pay that much extra?

As for the crimping thing - we went to another shop who got it done cheaper. In fact, we ended up spending more, since we got some extra stuff too from there because the rates were quite reasonable when you compare visiting Lamington to get your stuff.
 
rdst_1 said:
Shopkeeper has to pay rent for the shop, electricity at higher rates and also pay the attendants that he employs.
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Why is there an assumption that only brick and mortar stores have employees and pay rent + electricity. Who answers the phones for flipkart, who delivers their products, who packages it, who admins the site; and who will pay rent + electricity for their server space and warehouse space?

Frankly there's no point in even employing people at brick and mortar stores when they sit like buffaloes behind the counter. The whole experience of buying a product at a showroom is ruined when you encounter these salesmen with the take it or leave it attitude coupled with their half baked knowledge. If they aren't going to be useful, you might as well interact with a static webpage.

Univercell's MD apparently said with his volume he could easily match online pricing - but he didn't want to :p
Most of this brouhaha is fuelled by the recent entrants of Motorola and Xiaomi. Motos sells for the same price worldwide, so if they can manage it in foreign countries with minimum wages, then why not in India? I guarantee you if Motorola approached these brick and mortar stores first before deciding to launch it on Flipkart, they would've messed up the pricing or not even bothered to launch it.

Edit: I agree about the need for India to groom its own manufacturing sector.
 
Crazy_Eddy said:
Why is there an assumption that only brick and mortar stores have employees and pay rent + electricity. Who answers the phones for flipkart, who delivers their products, who packages it, who admins the site; and who will pay rent + electricity for their server space and warehouse space?

Frankly there's no point in even employing people at brick and mortar stores when they sit like buffaloes behind the counter. The whole experience of buying a product at a showroom is ruined when you encounter these salesmen with the take it or leave it attitude coupled with their half baked knowledge. If they aren't going to be useful, you might as well interact with a static webpage.

Univercell's MD apparently said with his volume he could easily match online pricing - but he didn't want to :p
Most of this brouhaha is fuelled by the recent entrants of Motorola and Xiaomi. Motos sells for the same price worldwide, so if they can manage it in foreign countries with minimum wages, then why not in India? I guarantee you if Motorola approached these brick and mortar stores first before deciding to launch it on Flipkart, they would've messed up the pricing or not even bothered to launch it.

Edit: I agree about the need for India to groom its own manufacturing sector.
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I never assumed that online stores don't have those kinds of overheads. But then they are thriving even when not making any profits. Do you think any normal shopkeeper can do that. They will have to close up shop and look at some other means to earn their living. Let's look at someone we know, Amarbir of Lynx-India. He had to close-up shop because the margins weren't just not there. Rents are sky high and paying skilled people ain't cheap either. I know his staff personally and they told me that he had been facing losses for a long time before he took that decision. He did have a very good alternate source of income which allowed him to continue pursuing his passion but it became a big burden in the end.
I get that most people are happy about this and yes most shopkeepers might deserve this but two wrongs don't make a right and that's what I am against. Big companies are greedy like hell. They don't leave enough margin for an average shopkeeper to give a competitive price.

The biggest point is that consumers seem to be happy because there is competition but fail to realize that they are actually killing the competition by not competing fairly.
 
swatkats said:
Yeah everyone's surprised. S5 mini is a flop product though.
No matter it won't sell stock to e-tailers. But small business would list on Online shopping sites.
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Recently I have not heard of any phone from Samsung which has been a hit. But still their crap sells in decent numbers since they have a brand value.
Even Technically challenged people know that Samsung > Micromax, Karbonn, Lava. Micromax, Lava, Karbonn have pathetic after sales service. Most people know that too. Henve Samsung emerges the winner here by just attending the party and not not even trying to do anything special to stand out.
If MMX, Karbonn, Lava had a bit better after sales support, Samsung would have had been obliterated from India.
 
On humane grounds , I sympathize with the offline traders. But pity at them not accepting the change. The world is changing fast. From industrial age we moved to digital and beyond. Competition is cut throat, so businesses will have to look for newer ways to cut costs. They cannot stop evolution, but should adapt.

Nothing is permanent but change.
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I have an friend who owns a retail shop ( Branded clothes) he tells me their margins are 40%, they make payments 4-6 months after purchase date, if stocks not sold, the company takes back the dead stock. Guess thats why we see 40% discounts on clothing and stuff
 
mk76 said:
On humane grounds , I sympathize with the offline traders. But pity at them not accepting the change. The world is changing fast. From industrial age we moved to digital and beyond. Competition is cut throat, so businesses will have to look for newer ways to cut costs. They cannot stop evolution, but should adapt.
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well-said; crux of the matter, without going into the intricacies and complexities of the issue. reminded me of the late Bruce Lee's (arguably) quote - "be like water; improvise, adapt, overcome. be water, my friend". :)
 
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