It's The Big Billion Day, Today!

We woke up this morning to a plethora of ‘GOOD DEALS’ offered by online retailers in the front pages of popular newspapers in full size, pushing both Modi and Lady to oblivion. One said that it’s The Big Billion Day. The competitor said that it’s only a big day for others and for us it’s business as usual and there’s nothing different today. All days are ‘DEAL DAYS’ where you get everything at cheap prices. But the site also offers top deals opening every hour from 7am to 10am. My daughter picked up the pages and being oblivious of her coffee fast losing its steam she began to boisterously call out the deals that attracted her most. She quickly got hooked on to her tablet like how a hungry suckling would hurriedly mouth its feed. I am sure she punched in late at office today. The day did make a big difference to all of us.

Those in the lifestyle retailing business would know that the four months - beginning from October till January - would clinch almost 70% of the year’s sales. The Big Billion Day Sales may even surpass the ‘Sabse Sastha 4 Din Sales’ put together! The onliners have just begun their business. They have tolled the knell today ushering in the festive season; my prayer is that it should not be the death knell for their offline counterparts! In some CDIT stores the mobile phone category contribution goes up even to the extent of 15% of the total sales! They’ll face a tough time. The fabulous discount of over 50% on ‘atheleisure’ and sporty footwear offered online might send shivers down the spines of footwear retailers.

In an interim conversation that punctuated our surprises of prices, we wondered how these huge discounts are offered! And how such huge advertisement costs running to crores are afforded! My subconscious thoughts bordered on how the marketing intelligence system worked. Two large online retailers hit their full pages the same day and the smarter one has known about The Big Billion Day advertisement ahead and countered its move by taking it as an advantage to position itself as a guaranteed provider of best savings everyday- on the very first page of the same newspaper! After all they all have a good pricing intelligence system and this is no big deal for them!

I remember, a friend of mine who is a supplier to a few key online retailers in Mumbai told me last week that they offer good discounts on his products and sales are soaring. To my surprise he added that he never contributed anything big to the deep discounts they offered. If he gave 5%, they would give an extra 25% more contributing to the discounts on their own! It’s perhaps a game of attaining fast valuations and augmenting them to scale, again, so that the next round of funding would even out the odds!

And in today’s newspaper we also read that there is a savior coming in to help offline retailers to find a solution to turf wars – Shastri the Saviour representing the Aam Aadmi! Divinity, help him!

- Dr. Gibson G. Vedamani