Brick-and-mortar stores begin festive sales early to combat e-tailers

Experts say the idea is to dent e-tailers' plans and get a share of the purchase wallet quickly

The country's leading department store chains such as Shoppers Stop, Lifestyle, and Central have advanced their 'end of season sale' by a week this year as the pressure to compete with e-tailers grows.

Typically, 'end of season sale' kicks off around December 25 to take advantage of the week-long holiday between Christmas and New Year. This year, however, most chains, including the Raheja-owned Shoppers Stop, will begin the sale from December 15 itself, though Future Group (owners of Central) and Lifestyle (from the Landmark Group) will start their sales days from December 19, industry executives in the know of things said.

Shoppers Stop and Future Group were not immediately available for comment. But Landmark's Managing Director Vasant Kumar said his chain's sale period would coincide with that of e-tailers, who also plan to kick off their end of season sale around that time.

“Once you start it (that is, advance the sale), you cannot stop it," he said in a telephonic conversation with Business Standard.

But the move by offline stores, said experts, is intended to capture customers’ wallets before online players come out with their sale days around Christmas and New Year. ‘End of season sale' is undertaken to clear old stock before the next season kicks in. It happens twice a year, once in December and then in June.

While the sale would happen in the first or second week of January around five to six years ago, it came down to post Christmas around two to three years ago and is now being advanced further. The sale period typically extends for three to four days depending on the store chain.

“We are doing it before the online retailers come out with their sale. There is no other option,” a chief executive of a department store chain, who did not wish to be quoted, said, pointing to the pressure among offline players to counter e-tailers.

Anupam T, an independent retail consultant, said online portals had been discounting during peak season, which had hit top lines of most offline retailers. A case in point being the Dussehra-Diwali period, which has in many respects become an e-tailers' show what with sale days extending for four to five days during peak season.

And in some cases like with Amazon this year, the sale period came twice in a span of two to three weeks between Dussehra and Diwali.

“Now brick-and-mortar players are experimenting with discounted sales during the peak season. They want to see how this discounting will affect their top lines and bottom lines,” he said.

Anupam said the principle in retailing was to sell merchandise at full price during the shopping season and sell at a discount during off season and after a particular season to clear merchandise altogether.