12 Amazon physical stores to be opened for the upcoming fashion sale event, in Mumbai, NCR, and Bengaluru. Amazon physical stores! Is it just temporary physical stores or amazon is planning to launch offline stores permanently?
In previous years both Amazon and Flipkart have tried to go offline as well.
Flipkart company forged an alliance with e-commerce start-up StoreKing as part of its online to offline (o2o) strategy. Flipkart’s engineering chief Ravi Garikipati said “We are working on this whole concept called assisted commerce—it’s just a concept at this point”.
Amazon India launched its offline shopping initiative called Udaan in late 2014. Under this initiative, the company selects and trains local entrepreneurs to showcase its products in smaller cities and towns as well as in pockets of metros where Internet connectivity is poor. Project Udaan is still in progressing mode.
But none of the ventures has grown significantly from online to offline stores.
Amazon physical stores a initiative is been taken again to promote fashion sale, what is reason behind it. Is it due to GST or Amazon is thinking to add up a step in the Udaan project.
Arun Sirdeshmukh, head of Amazon’s fashion business, told TOI “We have tied up with the biggest tech parks in the country and these will act as activation and promotion for our sale. For our young consumers at these parks, this will be a good opportunity to step out and experience fashion at physical outlets”
Apart from lots of goodies as gifts and cashbacks Amazon will offer 50% to 80% sale on 3 lakh units across 1,500 brands. Fashion stands on second place after electronics category in online commerce segment. But it has issues of change in variety of sizes, colours, styles. Hence initiative to open only temporary physical stores is put forward.
The Rival Flipkart will also be running its end of season sale in upcoming weekend. Flipkart has a lead in fashion sector with its two fashion subsidiaries Myntra and Jabong. What strategy will Flipkart play against this move of Amazon, we might be able to see some movements from flipkart in coming days.
The sellers are trying to sell of their in stock inventory before GST rolls out, due to their will be a change in Prices and Taxes. Sellers and the brands might get a benefit if they could clear more stock before GST kicks in. As the products are taxed under previous service tax and VAT.
Mr. Sirdeshmukh also mentioned “Around a third of customers try fashion first on Amazon”, and hopefully this event will bring more customers online.
Very Good Article