Dim festive season for offline retailers; brightest for etailers courtesy electronics
By Editor 
Sales stats of online and offline Diwali sales are out! While the numbers look good for the ecommerce players, the sales figure of traditional retailers isn’t very impressive.
Negligible increase in sales for offline retailers
Which side will do better – offline or online, is always up for debate before every big holiday season. The online players seem to have won the 2016 debate.
Compared to the previous years, footfall in malls dipped by a considerable percentage and there was minor percentage increase in sales. Two factors led to this – lack of huge discounts and customers’ lack of interest in buying big ticket items offline.
Pushpa Bector, executive VP and Head – Premium Malls at DLF Utilities affirmed,
“The rise in sales was about 3-4% which is the same as last year for DLF Promenade. For DLF Place Saket it was a little higher at 4-5%.”
Although, there were few offline retail firms that witnessed substantial rise in sales because of their omni-channel strategy. Their online arm led the pack and helped them to grab customers’ attention.
For instance, Croma stores’ sales increased by 18% during the festive season. According to analysts, Tata’s online store allowed consumers to buy products online and pick it up from Croma stores, which could have contributed to increase in footfalls.
Electronics helped online players to win
Big etailers contributed the most to the total sales of the online retail industry during the festive season. According to RedSeer Consulting, October was one of the biggest month for the Indian e-tailing sector in terms of sales.
This was made possible due to electronics product category that accounted for 75% of the total ecommerce sales. Mobiles and tablets (50-55%), in particular flied off the shelves in huge numbers. Sample this: average order value (AOV) for electronics was 3,000-4,000, whereas for category like fashion, FMCG was Rs. 600.
“This festive season was very good, as we posted sales of close to Rs 400 crore almost double of Rs 219 crore of sale, which we clocked during last festive season,” shared Gionee India’s CEO Arvind R Vohra.
So this festive season was great for online players, more so for Flipkart. American etailer Amazon, Snapdeal, Shopclues, and Alibaba-backed Paytm too broke many sales records.
How will offline retailers compete with the beast that the etailers are becoming? Or are the impressive online sales figures just hogwash?
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