With e-commerce boom, another kind of startups has emerged "the end to end e-commerce solution providers, to connect artists, manufacturers, and retailers online" . Today each and every retailer and manufacturer in urban and semi-urban areas is thinking to put up his products online and here lies the new business. The business of bringing offline retailers online on channels such as Flipkart, Amazon, eBay, Snapdeal, Jabong, Myntra, Paytm and much more now in the market.
Let me take you through this DRAMA:
Why is it a DRAMA?
Because up to Rs. 60,000 is the one-time fee charged just to make the fool out of the offline retailers. "We will put up all your products on all online channels in shortest possible time for a quick ROI and help with marketing and analytics"
The marketplace is the last field e-commerce channels push, whereas they highlight it maximum in their ads in media. They push outright purchases, they push SOR products lying at their warehouse ( Sale or Return).
The number of products listed to the sale percentage is far below even 2% on monthly basis.
The e-commerce channels are themselves not stable to grow the business of their sellers. I wonder how mediators pitch in claiming that they can do instant uploads, cataloging, pricing, inventory, warehousing, content marketing - The easiest jobs for them they say.
The top e-commerce channels themselves are working on improving seller panels, till now accountancy is fishy, they themselves find them in the pool of their technical issues which lead to huge inconvenience to sellers every day.
Sellers are being guided wrong by mediators, where they need to pay for Product Advisory, Registration on channels, Photoshoots, Content writing, Cataloging, Warehousing, Order processing, Panel management and then so called Intelligent analytics. Dear Mediators, at the end, when e-commerce is themselves not pushing regular sellers, what you will be able to do by charging a normal offline selling so huge? Already there are pinching charges of e-commerce for Sellers & you are just an add on. Now is not the time for you!
Now let us talk about variable cost which starts from Rs.150 and goes up to Rs.700 for a single SKU photoshoot, Rs.50-Rs.100 for writing content for an SKU, each SKU uploading on online channels cost goes up to Rs. 150-300 per SKU. Then commission on each product, Transaction cost, Shipping cost, Warehousing cost, RTO cost - Many more costs are identified to be charged to the Seller. Then a performance fee the mediators need ranges from 10-25%. That by chance sales happened, no stone has to be unturned to get money out of the seller.
Not a healthy business - We need to be facilitators and helpful to let people grow, to let sellers grow. We need to follow ethical business practices. Already e-commerce as a kid in India, is trying to get the hold in spite of being so immature and I may comment it is continuously improving on it, further mediators are just crushing the efforts as they will disappoint a large base of sellers very soon. Not by their ideas of bringing more people online but by their unethical pricing, unethical commitments and lack of knowledge. The e-commerce channels need to step in otherwise they are going to loose the huge number of good potential sellers.
My honest writings
Mandeep