Physical retailers prepare to take on e-tailers

After Flipkart, Amazon and others that have announced mega sale events this festive season, it is the turn of offline retailers to take on e-commerce players with their shopping events.

Kishore Biyani's Future Group has come out with 'The 12 months of Free Shopping Festival' from October 1 to 12, where customers can get up to Rs 3 lakh worth of free shopping in a year or Rs 25,000 of shopping every month.

But to get that, one needs to buy goods worth Rs 10 lakh. The minimum that a customer gets is Rs 600 worth of free annual shopping on a purchase of Rs 5,000.

Flipkart has already announced its 'Big Billion Day' with discounts, flash sales, deals of the hour, and lucky draws every hour across 70 categories. It came out with 'Deal of the Hour' on October 1. US-based Amazon is coming out with the Diwali Dhamaka week from October 10 to 16. Amazon says shoes and movie titles will be available at half the price and branded watches at 40 per cent discount between Saturday and Monday.

"Our offers will be bigger than theirs (e-commerce sites). Our idea is to acquire new customers and make them shop for 12 months," said Biyani.

According to Biyani, the new shopping event is the group's answer to the discounted sales of online retailers. Essar-owned The MobileStore has come out with an advertisement, which said: "We beat online like no one else can." Besides 10 per cent buyback and "lowest price guaranteed', it offers buyback with great value, setting up new phone for free, and data transfer to new phone, which it claims is better than online players. Raheja-owned Shoppers Stop has also come out with "Choose your own gift" event from September 12 to

December 28, where customers can get discount vouchers worth Rs 500 if they shop for Rs 5,000.

"The general feeling is that everything online is cheap in terms of deals and discounts, which is not true. We also give a lot of offers to customers," said Himanshu Chakrawarti, CEO of The MobileStore.

Chakrawarti said while online retailers' mobile phones are cheaper by six to seven per cent, The MobileStore gives theft insurance, extended warranty, accidental damage bundled with the phone as a free offer, which is worth 7.5 per cent of the value of the phone.