If You cannot lick them ; Join
them
CAIT stands for Confederation of All India Traders
It has over 4.5 million retailers as its members
Till a few weeks back , CAIT was opposed to e-commerce in retail
trade
But when it realized that the e-Commerce tide was unstoppable ,
it decided to join it !
Recently , CAIT General Secretary , Khandelwal said :
" E-commerce is a reality. We cannot be blind to it.
Through ‘e-Lala’, our aim is to retain consumers who were traditionally with
brick-and-mortar outlets but are now shifting away to online stores
We are being forced by circumstances to get into this. We have
to move with the times ”
By October 2015 , CAIT plans to launch its own e-Commerce portal
" e-Lala" to take on the likes of Amazon / Flipkart / Snapdeal /
Myntra etc
But unlike these existing e-Commerce portals , CAIT does not
have a war-chest of billions of dollars , to
> Set up Fulfillment Centers ( Warehouses ) all
over the country
> Advertise online / offline , in a big way
But when you have 4.5 million Fulfillment Centers ( of course small
) , spread all over the entire country , covering every street , then why do
you need to build central warehouses ?
And when 10 million delivery boys / girls , deliver a billion
packages every day to millions of households , with a plastic bag / card-box
carton that reads " YOUR e-LALA DELIVERY " , then why do you need to waste money on
advertising ?
Now the bad news :
> How will e-Lala control the quality of products
being delivered by 4.5
million retailers ?
> How will it ensure timely delivery ?
> How will it ensure that Member-Retailers do not
overcharge ?
> Existing e-Commerce portals buy in bulk ,
directly from the manufacturers
; then offer heavy discounts over the printed MRP . How will e-Lala counter
this ?
> Today , barely 5 % of the retail buyers , pay thru
Credit Cards . 95 % pay in cash
If e-Lala insists on advance payment
using Credit Card thru a online Payment Gateway , will this put-off buyers from
using e-Lala portal ?
Again ,
today , almost all buyers pay " Cash Against Delivery " to their
neighborhood retailer.
They may not like to pay in
advance of the delivery !
> To- day , buyers do refuse to accept deliveries
for various reasons , such as :
# Wrong product or labeling
or package size or brand
# Expiry date exceeded or
about to expire
# Even , change of mind !
All because , there is no online
advance payment , and nothing is lost by refusing !
> To-day , buyers are even able to return the purchased
goods to their neighborhood retailer , a couple of days later.
And the retailer usually accepts the
" Return " , in order to retain the
client on a long-term basis - client whom ,
he knows personally !
This will not be easy to duplicate in E-Lala
ecosystem !
This is not to say that CAIT's e-Lala experiment is doomed
!
If anything , e-Lala would do well to think through these issues
, then provide answers thru a FAQ page on its e-com web site
To help crystallize this thinking , it may not be too late even
now , for CAIT to host: TRUE / FALSE : YES/ NO : MULTIPLE CHOICE : online
Questionnaires , on its existing web site
One questionnaire for the End-Consumers and another one
for its 4.5 million member retailers
In today's " Dog it Dog " world of e-commerce , one
can neither dictate nor predict , a competitor's actions
That kind of wishful thinking just does not work
To stay two steps ahead of the Competitors , you need to think
and decide :
" What am I going to do this morning ? "
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
hemen parekh
25 July 2015
(M) 0 - 98,67,55,08,08
