Consumer durable retailers turn to e-commerce sites

Rakesh Biyani, Joint MD of Future Retail, had a confession to make at the recent India Retail Forum in Mumbai. He disclosed that he had recently bought a computer screen from Snapdeal.

For Biyani, who also owns Ezone, a brick and mortar player that sells consumer durables, the confession smacked of the over-encompassing lure of e-commerce. Though Biyani could have bought the product from his own online offering at Ezone, he chose to purchase from Snapdeal, “given the canvas of products, the huge discount, and the quick delivery option”.

Biyani is not alone. Though brick-and-mortar consumer durable players are unleashing their own omni channel online strategies, they have realised that they cannot do without the help of e-commerce players to help grow the market.

Despite having their own portals, most consumer durable retailers such as Croma, EZone and Next Retail have resorted to selling their products on e-commerce sites.

While Future Group’s Ezone has been on Snapdeal for the past six months, Tata Group’s Croma stores has recently extended its market offering across online major Amazon, ebay, and Snapdeal. Meanwhile, Next Retail, promoted by Videocon group is waiting to join a pure play e-commerce portal.

However, not all the products at their stores have been displayed on these e-commerce sites, as most players are reluctant to give discounts.

“We only list some of our products such as laptops and tablets. Discounts are limited on a case to case basis. At the moment, we are present only on Snapdeal, but are talking to more e-commerce sites, though strategically we still want to be an omni channel retailer,” said Rajan Malhotra, President, Retail Strategy, Future Group.

Almost two years ago, Tata Group-promoted Infinity Retail, which runs the Croma stores had decided to give a fresh impetus to e-commerce, by pegging its products on par with its offline stores. Chairman Cyrus Mistry had personally launched its online venture, cromaretail.com.

Ajit Joshi, CEO and MD, Infiniti Retail had told BusinessLine in an earlier interaction in 2012, that the company expected to cover around 319 cities in 24 States through its e-commerce offering. Joshi said he expected e-commerce to generate similar revenues to the brick-and-mortar business over the next two years.

However, the targets set by Croma through its own site (cromaretail.com) have not been met, and the firm has decided to reach out to its customers though other sites such as e-bay and more recently, Snapdeal.

“We are planning to tie up with e-commerce players,” said Sanjay Karwa, Director, Next Retail, of the Videocon Group. Most Next Retail stores have moved away from the metro markets, and better sales could be harnessed online.

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